PhD Scholarships at Sheffield Hallam University Business School

We are seeking PhD scholarship applications for 3 year funded full-time study with proposed theoretical and managerial implications in the following thematic research areas:

People, Work and Organisation (PWO), including: 

• Human resource management performance, coaching / mentoring
• Culture and language
• Employer relations or employment law
• Low pay and the living wage
• International HRM and cross-management in multinational enterprises,

Within the above thematic research areas, we especially welcome proposals with an emphasis on the creation of sustainable social, environmental and economic value in line with the principles of responsible management under the United Nations Global Compact-backed initiative, PRME.

Any enquiries should be emailed to Professor Peter Prowse, Head of PhD Programmes, orDr Christine Gilligan, PhD Admissions Tutor.

Seehttps://www.shu.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/phd-scholarship-opportunities/people-work-and-organisationon how to apply and the selection Process.

19th December 2017

Call for Special Issue Proposals: Human Resource Management Journal

Proposals should be submitted to HRMJ.journal@wiley.com by Monday 5th March 2018. Further information can be found here.

Human Resource Management Journal is a scholarly journal that seeks to promote the understanding of HRM to academics and practising managers. HRMJ aims to promote the theory and practice of HRM, to provide an international forum for discussion and debate, and to stress the critical importance of people management to a wide range of economic, political and social concerns. Over the last decade, HRMJ has broadened its editorial scope to become more globally oriented and has strengthened the international character of its Editorial Team and Board.

Further details on HRMJ can be found below and on the website: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1748-8583.

12th December 2017

Social Europe after Brexit

The University of Greenwich, London, is holding a seminar on ‘Social Europe after Brexit’, hosted by Philippe Pochet, the General Director of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and visiting lecturer at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) and the College of Europe.

Date: 7th of December 2017

Location: Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, Park Vista, Greenwich, SE10 9LZ.

Time: 16:00-17:30

Go to the website to Book Now.

The social dimension of the European Union has been long on the agenda in many different ways. Most people would agree that it has never been the highest on the agenda, but during the last decades there have been major developments with regard to works councils and the European Company Statute. Europe is now in a lot of turbulence, like the refugee crisis but, above all, the Brexit that is dominating all agendas for the moment, nationally as well as at European level. This seminar addresses the question how the development of Social Europe could be affected by Brexit – even if we are uncertain about the form of Brexit and the strategy that has to become clear the next couple of weeks. Some would suggest further progress on this would be damaged with the pulling out of the UK from the EU. Others seem to suggest there is more common understanding among the other EU member states to develop a stronger EU with possibly more support for the social aspects of European integration. Especially the role of social partners will be addressed.

4th December 2017

Academy of Social Sciences | eBulletin November 2017

The eBulletin is available to view online via the following link:
https://www.acss.org.uk/academy-ebulletin-november-2017/

For all news about the Academy and its Campaign visit www.acss.org.uk and campaignforsocialscience.org.uk

4th December 2017

The Gig Economy and Employment Relations

Speaker: Alex Wood (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford).

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 30 November 6pm
Lecture Theatre G33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

Recent media coverage of the so-called ‘gig economy’ (with companies such as Uber and Deliveroo) has exposed the shocking extent to which employers exploit vulnerable workers by adopting techniques such as wrongly classifying their employment status, employing them on zero hours contracts, and attaching them to online platforms that enable clients to access labour power potentially from anywhere in the world.

This presentation will explore what the growth of the gig economy means for employment relations by drawing on 180 worker interviews across eight countries, observation of a dozen worker events in the United States and the Philippines, and a survey of 683 Sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian workers. The findings will focus on the shared injustices, identity, solidarity, collective organisation and repertoires of action displayed by remote gig workers. The presentation will place these findings in historical context, highlighting the practical implications for worker organisation in the 21^st century and the conceptual consequences for employment relations as a field of study.      

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

29th November 2017

Call For Papers - BUIRA Conference 2018: The return of politics to employment relations (27 to 29 June 2018)

The call for papers is open until 30^th January 2018.

Please use template provided below and submit your abstract through the BUIRA website: http://www.buira.org/submit

If you would like to propose a stream or special session, please send a proposal to admin@buira.org by 20th December 2017.

BUIRA conference abstract template

Title:

Brief outline (100 words):

Methodology (150 words):

Key findings (250 words):

References:

 BUIRA Conference 2018

The return of politics to employment relations

Middlesex University, London Wednesday 27 to Friday 29 June 2018

Howell (2005) observes that the emergence of the “third system of industrial relations” in the UK – from 1979 - is one that, among the institutional issues, removed employment relations as a high profile political issue in public life.  While the Winter of Discontent made industrial relations the primary political national issue in the 1979 general election, by the time the Employment Relations Bill was being debated in 1998-9 it attracted low key media or even parliamentary attention.  If the neoliberal age has been one which has institutionally sidelined the notion of collective worker representation, it has also been one that has attempted to ideologically individualise the employment relationship into a market transactional one.

In 2017, the situation seems to have changed.  The underlying ideological predisposition that the employment relationship is a consensual voluntary market transaction is a lot less certain among a significant proportion of working people who instead see unfairness and futility.  In the UK, while unemployment is relatively low, ‘underemployment’ and the perceptions of insecurity, precarity, ‘bad jobs’ and inequality are high.  Similar tensions are reported across the developed world.  These changes could be partly the longer-term consequence of the global financial crisis of 2007/8, of global and national austerity or of the way in which globalisation has affected jobs in adjusting the global north to the global south. The politics surrounding the (un)fairness of the system governing work and employment are now acute and are beginning to challenge the assumptions underpinning key institutions governing the system as a whole. 

It is difficult to pin an exact location for this ‘disruption’ but its manifestations are evident.  While workplace collective bargaining remains dormant outside the shrunken domains of public sector and established large employers, the levels of discontent among the ‘unorganised’ are growing. This includes legal and small scale collective challenges to practices associated with the ‘gig economy’ (a prominent theme discussed at BUIRA 2017); and the return of industrial relations policy as a contested ideological agenda at national level politics (with Labour now championing trade union rights and the Conservative government seeming to need to address perceptions of unfairness with a more paternalist reform agenda on issues such as corporate governance and pay inequality.  The Conservatives’ apparent change of direction is of particular interest as it seems to mark an important symbolic break with the cornerstone principle of laissez-faire market individualism that has underpinned government policy since Thatcher in 1979.

Such re-politicisation of work and employment has not just been a UK phenomenon.  The Trump phenomenon in the US, with its rhetoric of protectionism and anti-immigration, has also arguably been based on a populist challenge to the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy of open markets. .  In France the direction seems to be equal and opposite: the reforming Macron government seems intent on market-based reforms to labour laws more in line with the neoliberal agenda falling out of favour elsewhere.

Although we welcome papers that concern any area of industrial relations, theoretical contributions in relation to the changes we’re observing in the relationship between politics and employment are particularly welcome, as well as papers concerning topics under the following headings:

• State regulation and unions
• Individual employment rights and juridification
• Migration and freedom of movement
• Work and inequality
• Corporate governance and worker voice
• Regulating the gig economy

27th November 2017

Sir Peter Carr 1930-2017 Obituary

Former member of BUIRA, Peter Carr, who has died aged 87, had a remarkable and varied career, including in industrial relations and as a leader of health service improvement. His focus was always on promoting productivity through constructive bargaining as a partnership between employers and workers, represented by unions.

Peter grew up in Mexborough, Yorkshire, the son of George Carr, a printer on the South Yorkshire Times, and his wife, Marjorie (nee Tailby), who engaged in entrepreneurial endeavours such as making sandwiches for working men’s clubs. Peter’s first job after leaving school, aged 13, was as a building-site joiner. His leadership skills were already apparent and he was soon working as site manager. This was interrupted by national service with the Royal Air Force mountain rescue team between 1951 and 1953.

Sponsored by the woodworkers’ union, he then studied politics and economics at Ruskin College, Oxford. He went on to lecture in Yorkshire and Essex colleges on management, labour history and economics, his students mostly shop stewards and managers. In the 1960s he led pioneering exchange courses between UK, Swedish and French trade unions.

Peter took increasingly senior roles in governmental agencies: the Prices and Incomes Board; the Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR); the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas); and the Department of Employment. At the CIR and Acas, he helped to investigate, prevent and settle industrial disputes. Although as a young man he was active in the Labour party and the Fabians, Conservative as well as Labour governments repeatedly re-appointed him to key leadership roles.

He led international missions and was labour attaché for the UK government in Washington DC for five years from 1978. He organised study exchanges between US and UK union leaders and employers.

When Peter returned to the UK, he applied industrial relations skills as regional director of North East City Action, encouraging economic development. In 1990, he became chair of the Northern (English) Regional Health Authority and in this role, and subsequent ones, he led a transformation of health services. ‘His’ region became the best performing region in the UK National Health Service (NHS). He was knighted in 2007.

He went on to chair the English NHS Trust Development Authority, when it was established in 2011. He served diligently in various roles until he was in his mid-80s.

His recreations included cinema, photography, cabinetmaking, cycling, cooking and US history. He founded the Northern Screen Commission, which found settings in the north for many films, including from the Harry Potter series. His memoir, It Occurred to Me (2016), humorously charted major moments of political history in which he participated. As a Europhile, he was appalled about Brexit.

He is survived by his wife, Geraldine (nee Ward), whom he married in 1958, son, Steve, daughter, Alyce, and four grandchildren. (Condolence Cards to: Lady Geraldine Carr, 4 Corchester Towers, Northumberland NE45 5NP, England. Donations would be welcome to www.parkinsons.org.uk ref. ‘Sir Peter Carr No. 1000420’.)

Both the NHS and the US Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) recently honoured his many achievements. (Peter’s son Steve said that the lifetime achievement award that LERA awarded to Peter meant more to him than his Knighthood!) Three UK universities conferred hon. doctorates on him. He served in many voluntary roles, including with all of the universities in north east England. For example, he was formerly a member of the Court, Newcastle University and of the Advisory Board, Newcastle University Business School.

To celebrate Peter’s life, there will be a memorial event in the Kings Hall at Newcastle University, at 3.30pm on 18 December 2017.  For details contact Melanie Reed, Events Manager, Newcastle University: melanie.reed@newcastle.ac.uk

Those wishing to contribute to the memorial event, please contact Steve:  stevecarr4@me.com

This obituary draws on a published obituary that also includes a photo of Sir Peter Carr: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/15/sir-peter-carr-obituary

Greg J. Bamber
Professor/Co-Director, Australian Consortium for Research in Employment & Work

Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Visiting Professor, Newcastle University, UK

www.linkedin.com/in/gregjbamber

22nd November 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS: Fourth Bi-Annual Fairness at Work Conference: 'Justice at Work: Challenges and Possibilities’, University of Manchester's Work & Equalities Institute (WEI).

The University of Manchester

Work & Equalities Institute (WEI)

Fourth Bi-Annual Fairness at Work Conference

'Justice at Work: Challenges and Possibilities’

Date: 10th & 11th September 2018

Venue: The University of Manchester

CALL FOR PAPERS

Building on the three previous Fairness at Work Conferences at the University of Manchester (in 2012, 2014, and 2016), the 2018 conference aims to bring together academics and practitioners to discuss strategic issues on the subject of justice and fairness at work. The last two years have seen a major shift in the political environment and an emergence of a politics of national insularity. Yet at the same time major strides have been made in raising awareness and support for living wage campaigns and improving workplace justice.  The conference aims to discuss developments in our understandings of the impact of technological changes (e.g. the gig economy), the changing experiences of work amongst groups of vulnerable workers (e.g. younger workers), the impact of an increasingly hostile context on notions of justice and fairness at the workplace (e.g. a greater challenge to minority rights) and the responses and roles of trade unions and other civil society organisations in dealing with such challenges.

The conference is being held in Manchester at the same time as the 150^th Annual Conference of the UK’s Trade Unions Congress and will organise sessions linked to the TUC conference themes, with invited speakers and activities focused on the future of trade unions and worker regulation and rights.  The TUC was founded in Manchester in 1868 and the WEI Fairness at Work conference will include social and cultural activities linked to the labour history and struggles for equality of the city. 

Papers are invited on these developments in the areas of fair treatment at work, diversity and equality, stress and well-being, dignity at work, employment regulation, worker participation, trade unionism, technology and work, and key elements of employment relations such as pay, pensions and working time.

Cost: £200 Waged (£50 unwaged): includes all food and drink plus the conference dinner

Abstract submission: Please email 500-word abstracts or 1000-word for sessions by 1^st  March 2018 tofairwrcconferences@mbs.ac.uk 

About the Work & Equalities Institute: The Work & Equalities Institute brings together the European Work and Employment Research Centre and Fairness at Work Research Centre with expertise across human resource management, industrial relations, labour economics, organisational psychology, and employment law. The team has a track record, built over more than twenty five years, of informing the evidence-base and policy agenda of the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation, as well as national organisations such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and others. WEI’s research is being used in knowledge exchange, dialogue and debate with key stakeholders and policy makers, and makes informed contributions to policy formation and practice.https://www.mbs.ac.uk/research/centres-and-institutes/work-and-equalities-institute/

21st November 2017

VACANCY - POST OF REGIONAL ORGANISER FOR THE NORTH EAST AREA (BASED IN MANCHESTER), EQUITY

If anyone is interested in the below job, please contact Ian for further information and relevant job advert and attachments.

Ian Manborde

Equalities

Diversity Organiser, Equity

T: 020 7670 0273

M: 07595 201 640

Email: imanborde@EQUITY.ORG.UK

JOB CONTEXT FOR THE POST OF REGIONAL ORGANISER FOR THE NORTH EAST AREA (BASED IN MANCHESTER), EQUITY

 Equity

Equity is the UK trade union for professional performers and creative practitioners. As a leading industry organisation, Equity is known and respected nationally and internationally for the work we do with, and on behalf of, our members working across all areas of the entertainment industry.

We are a campaigning and organising union and proud of our strong record of taking the things that matter to our members to parliament and other centres of influence. Members are at the heart of all the union’s activities and by getting involved they drive forward the work of the union.

Equity works to support its 42,000+ members by negotiating their terms and conditions including fee structures with all kinds of employers and employer’s groups.

Background

The union has a team of staff in offices across the UK who have a wealth of experience and expertise when it comes to advice and representation. They are able to deal with the issues raised by members working in all areas of the industry whether it be a major feature film, a theatre in education show, radio voice overs, a circus act or any other live or recorded work.

The post of Regional Organiser for the North East Area works within a small team of highly skilled organisers dedicated to representing, protecting and promoting the interests of our members and plays a key role in organising, representing and supporting Equity members working in both live entertainment and recorded media in Yorkshire and the North East of England. As the current contract expires at the end of 2017, we are seeking to appoint from 2018 onwards.

We have Regional Organisers for the North East, North West, Midlands and South East Areas of the UK and National Organisers for Scotland & Northern Ireland, and Wales and the South West of England.  They are responsible for the monitoring and enforcing of collective agreements, leading negotiations with employers for revision of agreements and establishing new agreements. They manage a regional casework load and represent members in dispute with employers. Their day-to-day work includes responding to queries from members and giving advice on interpretation of agreements and enquiries arising from individual engagements. 

Equity, Guild House, Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EG

www.equity.org.uk   

Find Equity on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Equity/29887547393 & Twitter at twitter.com/EquityUK

20th November 2017

Reminder - CIPD Applied Research Conference 2017

There's still time to register for the CIPD Applied Research Conference, taking place this year in Glasgow, on 30 November and 1 December, 2017. 

The Applied Research Conference (ARC) is an annual meeting place for researchers and practitioners working in people management, employment policy and related fields. It is an interdisciplinary conference that covers a wide range of aspects of people management, employment, learning and development and organisational development.

Register now »

The conference starts on the evening of Thursday 30 November with practical workshops. The main programme on Friday 1 December centers on 35 research papers grouped into 15 thematic streams.

Don't miss out on hearing informative keynote presentations from:

• Professor Kim Hoque and Dr Lisa Cameron MP on disability at work
• Professor Eva Demerouti on work engagement and job crafting

Take a look at the full programme and booking information here.

ARC holds a unique place in strengthening links between academic research and HR practice. Join us to hear about cutting edge research, discuss how it can be applied in policy and practice, and network with like-minded researchers and practitioners.

We look forward to welcoming you to the event. Please feel free to forward this email on to any collaegues who you think may be interested in attending.

8th November 2017

Central London BUIRA Seminar: European Social Dialogue

Philippe Pochet (General Director, European Trade Union Institute) on What is the Role of Employers and what are the Hopes for the Future?

Werner Buelen (European Federation of Building and Woodworkers) on The Difficulties and Reality of the European Social Dialogue for Trade Unions

Discussant: Professor Richard Hyman (LSE)

Friday 24 November 2017, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)
Room C385 (lunch C287)

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

This regular monthly seminar is focused on European Social Dialogue (ESD), which celebrated its 30^thanniversary in 2015, and we are extremely lucky that Philippe Pochet, has agreed to speak on this. Philippe is General Director of the ETUI and visiting lecturer at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) and the College of Europe, having previously been Director of the Observatoire social européen (OSE). The ESD remains one of the pillars of social Europe and an important element of European integration, though since the beginning of the millennium it has lost much of its momentum. His aim is to speak about the strategy of the different EU actors, in particular the employers’ organisations and European multinationals in the ESD, and to consider the ESD’s possible revival following the crises of European integration and threats to the internal market. Werner Buelen, Political Secretary Construction, from the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers will then follow with a critical account of the reality and results of the ESD.Richard Hyman, author with Rebecca Gumbrell McCormick of Trade Unions in Western Europe, has agreed to act as discussant.

The subject is highly topical in the light of the Brexit debate and the seminar provides an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend this event. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke,  clarkel@wmin.ac.uk or020350 66528

7th November 2017

VACANCY – Senior Lecturer in International Human Resource Management

Newcastle University Business School – Senior Lecturer in International Human Resource Management

The vacancy closes on 29th November and is listed also on jobs.ac.uk: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BFJ051/senior-lecturer-in-international-human-resource-management-b94857a/

Applications are via the HR job vacancies website: https://vacancies.ncl.ac.uk/LoginV2.aspx

6th November 2017

A Symposium On Public Sector Pay And Workforce Issues: The End Of Austerity?

The University Of Greenwich Work And Employment Research Unit And Public Services International Research Unit Present

A Symposium On Public Sector Pay And Workforce Issues: The End Of Austerity?

Wednesday 29 november 2017. 13.00 – 18.00

Venue: Room HH102, Hamilton House, Park Vista, Greenwich, SE10 9LZ

This symposium brings together a range of speakers to discuss the current state of public sector pay and workforce issues.  We will look at what has happened to pay and the workforce in the public sector over the years of the Government pay policy, with up-to-date assessments from key participants in the debate. We have several speakers with different perspectives to help build the bigger picture. In recent months, the question of lifting the 1% cap on public sector pay has risen to the top of the political agenda. There are claims and counter claims about whether public or private sector workers are paid more and these claims will be tested.

Chair: Professor Sian Moore, University of Greenwich

Keynote speakers:

Ken Mulkearn, (Editor/author of Pay in the Public Services 2017, published by Incomes Data Research). Ken will cover recent pay outcomes and what they indicate for policy, where policy might be headed and the influences on this (labour markets, Government stance, unions, LP policy). He will also cover the key issues for policy-makers – comparability, pay progression, pay setting machinery, supply and inflation/catch-up.

Joshua Rawlings, (Economic Researcher, Office for National Statistics). Joshua’s presentation will cover information around the factors affecting earnings using ASHE. The presentation focuses in particular on the differences in public and private sector pay. It presents two statistical models which explore the relationship between mean hourly earnings excluding overtime and a range of independent variables, the estimates of which are based on the 2016 ASHE data and includes a control for the size of the organisation.

Other Speakers

David Powell, (Senior salary officer NEU (NUT section, following the merger with ATL)) will cover pay developments in schools, Academies and the STRB. The talk will set out the impact of public sector pay policy since 2010 on teachers in schools and academies.  The following issues will be covered: pay restraint; the breakup of the national teacher pay structure; the imposition of performance-related pay; and the consequences of these policy developments for teacher recruitment and retention.

Peter Gordon, (Head of terms and conditions of service, British Medical Association) will cover the junior doctors’ dispute and the role of the DDPRB. He will outline the BMA’s interactions with the DDRB (doctors’ pay review body), talk about the junior doctor contract dispute before finishing with a short section on negotiating during austerity.

Gerry O’Dwyer, (National Officer Royal College of Nursing). Pay developments for NHS staff. Gerry will highlight the issues in respect of the 2017/18 NHS pay round and the ‘claim’ made by unions to the Chancellor in advance of the submission of evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body. This will cover in particular the position of nurses and health care assistants and will highlight the issues that have caused them most concern during the period of austerity. He will also discuss the RCN’s successful  ‘Scrap the Cap campaign’, as well as the challenges that the RCN can face in considering industrial action.

Dave Penman, (General Secretary, First Division Association): Dave will consider the impact of pay policy on senior civil servants and the issues of recruitment and retention of skilled employees in the senior civil service.

A panel of experts will then discuss the issues raised

Nicola Allison, Remuneration Advisor, Office of Manpower Economics

Heather Wakefield, National Negotiations Officer for Local Government, Unison and Visiting Fellow, University of Greenwich

Professor Ian Kessler, Kings College London.

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 from outside the University of Greenwich by registering your interest at:

 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-symposium-on-public-sector-pay-and-workforce-the-end-of-austerity-tickets-39015529499?aff=es2 ​

How To Find Us

Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, Greenwich, London SE10 9LZ

Telephone: +44 20 8331 9083 E-mail:i3centre@gre.ac.uk

3rd November 2017

Call for the next BUIRA stewardship 2019-2022

2nd November 2017

Call For Papers - BUIRA Conference 2018

Call for Papers

BUIRA Conference 2018

The return of politics to employment relations

Middlesex University, London Wednesday 27 to Friday 29 June 2018

Howell (2005) observes that the emergence of the “third system of industrial relations” in the UK – from 1979 - is one that, among the institutional issues, removed employment relations as a high profile political issue in public life.  While the Winter of Discontent made industrial relations the primary political national issue in the 1979 general election, by the time the Employment Relations Bill was being debated in 1998-9 it attracted low key media or even parliamentary attention.  If the neoliberal age has been one which has institutionally sidelined the notion of collective worker representation, it has also been one that has attempted to ideologically individualise the employment relationship into a market transactional one.

In 2017, the situation seems to have changed.  The underlying ideological predisposition that the employment relationship is a consensual voluntary market transaction is a lot less certain among a significant proportion of working people who instead see unfairness and futility.  In the UK, while unemployment is relatively low, ‘underemployment’ and the perceptions of insecurity, precarity, ‘bad jobs’ and inequality are high.  Similar tensions are reported across the developed world.  These changes could be partly the longer-term consequence of the global financial crisis of 2007/8, of global and national austerity or of the way in which globalisation has affected jobs in adjusting the global north to the global south. The politics surrounding the (un)fairness of the system governing work and employment are now acute and are beginning to challenge the assumptions underpinning key institutions governing the system as a whole. 

It is difficult to pin an exact location for this ‘disruption’ but its manifestations are evident.  While workplace collective bargaining remains dormant outside the shrunken domains of public sector and established large employers, the levels of discontent among the ‘unorganised’ are growing. This includes legal and small scale collective challenges to practices associated with the ‘gig economy’ (a prominent theme discussed at BUIRA 2017); and the return of industrial relations policy as a contested ideological agenda at national level politics (with Labour now championing trade union rights and the Conservative government seeming to need to address perceptions of unfairness with a more paternalist reform agenda on issues such as corporate governance and pay inequality.  The Conservatives’ apparent change of direction is of particular interest as it seems to mark an important symbolic break with the cornerstone principle of laissez-faire market individualism that has underpinned government policy since Thatcher in 1979.

Such re-politicisation of work and employment has not just been a UK phenomenon.  The Trump phenomenon in the US, with its rhetoric of protectionism and anti-immigration, has also arguably been based on a populist challenge to the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy of open markets. .  In France the direction seems to be equal and opposite: the reforming Macron government seems intent on market-based reforms to labour laws more in line with the neoliberal agenda falling out of favour elsewhere.

Although we welcome papers that concern any area of industrial relations, theoretical contributions in relation to the changes we’re observing in the relationship between politics and employment are particularly welcome, as well as papers concerning topics under the following headings:

• State regulation and unions
• Individual employment rights and juridification
• Migration and freedom of movement
• Work and inequality
• Corporate governance and worker voice
• Regulating the gig economy

The call for papers is open until 30^th January 2018.

Please use template provided below and submit abstract through the BUIRA website: https://www.buira.org/

If you would like to propose a stream or special session, please send a proposal to admin@buira.org by 20th December 2017.

BUIRA conference abstract template

Title:

Brief outline (100 words):

Methodology (150 words):

Key findings (250 words):

References:

2nd November 2017

Academy of Social Sciences | eBulletin October/November 2017

ACADEMY E-BULLETIN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

For all news about the Academy and its Campaign visit www.acss.org.uk and campaignforsocialscience.org.uk

 ACADEMY NEWS

NEW FELLOWS

Earlier this month the Academy has conferred the award of Fellow on 69 leading social scientists. The new Fellows are drawn from academics, practitioners and policymakers across the social sciences. They have been recognised after an extensive peer review process for the excellence and impact of their work through the use of social science for public benefit. This includes substantial contributions and leadership in various fields, including higher education, social, economic and environmental policy, government, law, charitable foundations and think tanks.

Announcing the conferment, Professor Roger Goodman FAcSS, Chair of the Academy said, “Each new distinguished Fellow has been recognised for their outstanding and impactful contributions in their respective fields, and will prove invaluable additions to the range of expertise within the Academy. This speaks not only to the power and scope of the social sciences to address the big issues of our time, but also to the growing depth and breadth of representation within the Academy as the voice of the social science community as a whole.” More (including full list)

REF SUB-PANEL MEMBERSHIP APPLICATIONS

HEFCE has begun the work of recruiting people to serve as members of the Sub-Panels for the next REF exercise. The information is here and here.

Nomination is via subject associations. We are ready, as with the recruitment of chairs, to confirm Fellowship for individuals, giving the date of conferment and confirming that they remain in good standing with the Academy (which means that the individual has not resigned or lapsed their Fellowship and their subscription is up to date). Once you know you are being nominated, please write to Jordene Sewell to request this, noting which learned society is nominating you and for which Sub-Panel.

NEW ESRC HEAD

The Academy of Social Sciences congratulates Professor Jennifer Rubin of King’s College London on her appointment as Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council.  The ESRC needs to be a strong voice for using a wide range of types of rigorous social science research and evidence in the new problem-driven funds of UKRI – for example in addressing industrial strategy and global challenges. It also needs to support a strong social science base of many different types of social science, including basic, descriptive and causal research across all disciplines. We are sure that under Professor Rubin’s leadership the ESRC will continue to recognise the importance of maintaining and extending the excellence of the strong social science base in the UK. We look forward to working with Professor Rubin both to promote the best use of social science evidence and to ensure support for existing strengths in UK social sciences, as well as their further development.

NOMINATIONS

The closing date for receipt of Fellowship nominations for the winter round is Friday 24^th November. Guidelines and Forms are available from the Academy website.

 NEW WEBSITE

We are delighted to launch our new-look website, with improved functionality and stability. Do please take a look.

ACADEMY EVENTS

PRESIDENT’S LUNCH 2017 – Edinburgh, 14^th December – NOW BOOKING

This year the lunch returns to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and will be held on Thursday 14^th December 2017. We are delighted that John Swinney MSP, Deputy First Minister, will speak at the event. This is the annual highlight of the Academy’s calendar; an opportunity for Fellows, member learned societies and their guests to enjoy high level networking in elegant and congenial surroundings. Newly conferred Fellows may also be presented with their certificate by the President at the event. Learned Societies may take whole or part tables (tables will seat 8 people). Tickets are available here.

CfSS 5th ANNUAL SAGE PUBLISHING LECTURE 2017 – ‘EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY IN A POPULIST ERA’ – 21^st November

The Rt Hon Lord (David) Willetts FAcSS, former Minister of State (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) (Universities and Science), is confirmed as respondent for the lecture to be given on ‘Educational Inequality in a Populist Era’ by Professor Louise Richardson FAcSS, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. The event will take place at 61 Whitehall, London SW1A 2ET, on the evening of Tuesday 21^st November 2017. Fellows and Learned Societies should have received an email invitation with a link for booking places, which are free.

INTERNATIONAL AND MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY (London 4^th December)

Part of the seminar series organised by the Academy’s International Advisory Group. Seminar 4: ‘Historical and International Perspectives on Health’ will take place at 33 Finsbury Square, London EC2A 1AG on 4^th December 2017. More

CAMPAIGN FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE NEWS

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP FORUM (SLF) EXAMINES ROLE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The first meeting of the Campaign for Social Science’s newly convened Strategic Leadership Forum on 10 October considered how the social sciences could most effectively contribute to the emerging priorities of the government’s industrial strategy. Bringing together leaders from across academia, the public sector and industry, the SLF addressed two major themes: the role of the social sciences in solving the ‘productivity puzzle’, and how to make more effective use of social science expertise by forging new links across business and social enterprise.  The meeting included an excellent talk from Andy Haldane FAcSS, Chief Economist at the Bank of England, on the productivity challenges facing the UK. Participants agreed various means by which members of the Forum can help showcase the ways in which they are deeply engaged with the challenges of regional development and industrial strategy, and the global challenges set by UKRI.

The SLF is one of the benefits available to Silver and Gold level members of the CfSS Supporter Scheme. It brings together social science leaders to discuss key topics, foster learning and strengthen strategic relationships across the sector. It offers social science leaders a unique opportunity to engage with current and forthcoming policy issues and hear from colleagues in the sector, external decision makers, influencers and thought leaders. Its goal is to examine what the Campaign for Social Science can do to promote the prospects of social science, including research funding, and to work more closely with HEIs and Learned Societies to do so.

More information about joining the scheme is available by emailing the Campaign team.

“PATHWAYS TO IMPACT IN THE WELSH GOVERNMENT AND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF WALES” TOOLKIT

The Campaign for Social Science launched a new online tool-kit Pathways to impact: a practical guide for researchers, in collaboration with Cardiff University. The online tool-kit is designed to help new researchers improve their political impact by providing guidance to link social science evidence more closely to the policy making process, with a focus on the Welsh Government and National Assembly for Wales.

A series of straightforward recommendations outlines how to make sure research stands out and is most effectively put into action by civil servants, parliamentarians, and Ministers. There are four broad themes: understanding the political context and landscape; engagement and maximising impact; credibility and independence; overcoming obstacles. More

Policy Monitor for October– our monthly compendium of official consultations relevant to our community, is also available in an online searchable form on the Campaign website

 POLICY WORK

From our Head of Policy: Sharon Witherspoon MBE FAcSS

During October we have continued our engagement with the ESRC and UKRI over the longitudinal studies review, data access and industrial strategy.  We remain concerned that the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund needs to consider not only the social science elements of the current challenges identified so far under the industrial strategy, but also the ‘horizontal’ elements that might lead to strategic consideration of productivity and regional differences, including experiments that might explore how to improve productivity.

We held fruitful meetings with our Learned Society members at the end of September and again at the British Academy in early October about the work that they are already doing to engage with practitioners and professionals outside academic that might inform our engagement with the ESRC and UKRI.  We are preparing a template and plan to circulate that shortly. It is vital that we are able to demonstrate the existing work the social sciences are already undertaking to engage outside the academic community.

Meanwhile, we are continuing our work on pathways from school to university to employment, showing the various destinations of employment of social science graduates, and highlighting the importance of number and data skills.  We expect to have a draft report by the end of the year, with the aim of launching in February. Sage Publishing is partnering in this work.

We also note the publication today of the Final Report of the Industrial Strategy Commission, headed by Dame Kate Barker FAcSS.

CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL SCIENCE – the journal of the Academy of Social Sciences

• Volume 12, issues 1 and 2 have been published as “Political Activism across the Life Course”. Instructions for accessing Contemporary Social Science. See the related blogpostby the Editor, David Canter on Social Science Space.
• Listen to introductory podcasts to many issues by the Journal Editor (transcripts available).
• The Editor continues to welcome proposals for themed issues. Guidelines.

Current Calls for Papers for themed issues:

• Social Urbanistics: Social science explorations of urbanisms (deadline 30^th January 2018) FELLOWS’ BOOKS AND NEWS

OPPORTUNITIES

• UKRI are now looking for Council members. More

FELLOWS NEWS AND BOOKS

• Professor Vernon Bogdanor CBE FAcSS will deliver a Gresham Lecture on ‘The 2016 US Presidential Election – One Year On’ on 7th November
• BOOK PRIZE: Graham Towl FAcSS and Tammi Walker win BPS book award with Preventing Self-Injury and Suicide in Women’s Prisons
• BOOK LAUNCH (LSE, 8 November): Ian Gough FAcSS, Heat, Greed and Human Need
• NEW BOOK: Tony Champion FAcSS, Thomas Cooke, Ian Shuttleworth (eds), Internal Migration in the Developed World: Are we becoming less mobile?
• NEW BOOK: Diane Reay FAcSS, Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes
• NEW BOOK: Louise Fitzgerald FAcSS and Aoife McDermott, Challenging Perspectives on Organizational Change in Health Care
• NEW BOOK: David Byrne FAcSS and Sally Ruane, Paying for the Welfare State in the 21st Century
• NEW BOOK: Gordon Foxall FAcSS, Advanced Introduction to Consumer Behaviour Analysis
• NEW BOOK: Gordon Foxall FAcSS, Cognition in Consumer Psychology: How Perception and Emotion Guide Action
• NEW BOOK: Malcolm Cowburn, Loraine Gelsthorpe FAcSS, Azrini Wahidin FAcSS (eds), Research Ethics in Criminology: Dilemmas, Issues and Solutions
• NEW BOOK: Azrini Wahidin FAcSS, Ex-Combatants, Gender and Peace in Northern Ireland: Women, Political Protest and the Prison Experience
• NEW BOOK: Panicos Demetriades FAcSS, A Diary of the Euro Crisis in Cyprus – Lessons for bank recovery and resolution

LEARNED SOCIETY NEWS AND EVENTS

• British Academy of Management (BAM)

o   CEO sought – deadline extended to 2 November. More

o   Event: Doctoral writing workshop (Joint LLD and OTCD SIG event). London 27 November

o   Event: Mid-career faculty – moving to the next level. Nottingham 30 November

o   International Journal of Management Reviews (IJMR) Special Issue – ‘Paradoxes’ - Call for Papers (deadline 1 November)

o   Association for Project Management (APM)

o   New publication: Road to Chartered series, No 6: ‘Professional Responsibilities and Obligations: the case of millennials’.

o   Research publication: The Importance of Conventions: a critical evaluation of current practice in social cost-benefit analysis

o   Project Assurance SIG Conference. ‘Project Assurance: what could it do for you?’ London, 23 November.

o   Festival of Social Science Event: ‘Putting social science into project management’. London, 9 November.

• British Educational Research Association (BERA)

o   2017 BERA SAGE Public Engagement and Impact Award Winner announced

o   2018 BERA Doctoral Thesis and Masters Dissertation Awards – Now Open. (Deadline 12 January 2018)

• Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE)

o   Event: Fulfilling the potential of your doctorate. London, 24 November

o   Event: Beds, bricks and HE (II) – trends and issues in student residential accommodation. London 24 November

o   Event: Preventing plagiarism. London 24 January 2018

o   Measuring Employability Gain. London 21 November 2017.

o   SRHE International Research Conference 2017 – ‘Higher Education rising to the challenge: Balancing expectations of students, society and stakeholders’ Newport, Wales, 6-8 December 2017.

o   SRHE Newer Researchers’ Conference, Newport Wales, 5 December 2017

• Society for the Advancement of Management Studies (SAMS)

o   Professional Development Workshop, 20 April 2018, USA

o   Journal of Management Studies Conference 2018. Babson College USA, 18-20 April 2018 – call for papers now open.

• British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA)

o   Annual Conference 2018 with doctoral masterclasses. London, 10-11 April 2018.

• British Sociological Association (BSA)

o   BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2018 – Call for Nominations (1^st December 2017)

o   Postgraduate Forum Regional Day Event proposals 2018.

o   Work, Employment and Society - Call for Papers – Solidarities in and through Work in an Age of Extremes (1 December 2017)

• British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE)

o   Biennial Conference: ‘Comparative Education and Development Alternatives: Critiques, Innovations and Transitions’. York, 12-14 September 2018. 

o   Seed corn and Research Capacity Building Funding Opportunities (Deadline 1 May 2018)

o   BAICE Thematic Forum Grants (Deadline 1 May 2018)

• British Society of Criminology (BSC)

o   Innovation Fund Grants now available.

• Political Studies Association (PSA)

o   Total Exposure. The PSA is inviting academics to pitch TV or radio programmes based on their research to top broadcasters (deadline 31 October)

o   Free one-day EU workshop for teachers London, 25 November.

• Society for Studies in Organizing Healthcare (SHOC)

o   Biennial Conference: Co-ordinating healthcare across boundaries and borders. Montreal, May 2018. More

• British Society of Gerontology (BSG)

o   47th Annual British Society of Gerontology Conference, Manchester, United Kingdom, 4–6 July 2018

• Association for Social Anthropology (ASA)

o   Conference: Shifting States. Australia 15-18 December 2017

• Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS)

o   Biennial conference: Psychosocial Reflections on a Half Century of Cultural Revolution. Bournemouth 5-7 April 2018.

• Regional Studies Association (RSA)

o   PhD Student and early career conference 2017: ‘Charting a career path – sharing the learning and lessons. Newcastle 2-3 November.

• Association for Tourism in HE (ATHE)

o   Annual Conference - New Approaches to Tourism Learning in Higher Education. 7-8 December 2017. Eastbourne, 7-8 December 2017.

• Social Research Association (SRA)

o   Annual Conference 2017: ‘Social Research in a Sceptical Age’. London 6 December 2017.

o   o    Annual Conference 2018. Keele, 6-8 April 2018.

SOCIAL SCIENCE SPACE

Some recent postings on socialsciencespace.com

• Robert Dingwall FAcSS, Open Access and Learned Societies – an update
• David Canter FAcSS, When is it appropriate to call a crime ‘Terrorist’?
• Robert Dingwall FAcSS, Presumed Consent to Organ Donation – Gesture Politics?
• Elizabeth Newnham, Rex Pui-kin Lam, Satchit Balsani, When you talk about evacuation, you talk about psychology
• Michael Todd, Mitigation: the best kind of rainy day savings

Social Science bites podcast:

Tom Chatfield on Critical Thinking and Bias

Philosopher Tom Chatfield’s media presence – which is substantial – is often directly linked to his writings on technology. But his new book is on critical thinking, and while that involves humanity’s oldest computer, the brain, Chatfield explains in this Social Science Bites podcast that new digital realities interact with old human biases. As Chatfield tells interviewer Dave Edmonds, while he defines bias as “an inaccurate account of the way things actually are,” this like confirmation, affect and recency bias aren’t automatically toxic to critical thinking.

2nd November 2017

Special issue of the living Wage in the journal Employee Relations

1st November 2017

Challenges in Equality and Diversity in 2017

The University of Greenwich is proud to announce the launch of its university-wide Diversity Interest Group. Our key-note speakers are: 

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE
Professor Kim Hoque

The launch event will take place on Thursday 2nd November in QA063 at 6pm-8pm.

Join us for an evening of key-note speeches, Q&A, poster displays, canapes and wine!

To register, please email BusinessEvents@gre.ac.uk

30th October 2017

Lecturership in HRM, Birkbeck College, University of London

Lecturership in HRM, Birkbeck College, University of London

This post, for which the closing date is 15 November 2017, is advertised as being in HRM, so many readers of this bulletin may not consider it at first glance, but in the particulars it is also stated the main field for applicants should be either HRM or ER/IR. My colleague John Kelly and I would very much encourage potential applicants whose main field is employment/industrial relations to apply, to join our little team of ER/IR specialists in the Department of Management at Birkbeck. This is an open-ended position at the level of lecturer with an initial three-year probation. Those interested should contact: Professor John Kelly, Professor in Management (j.kelly@bbk.ac.uk) or Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, Senior Lecturer in Management (r.gumbrell-mccormick@bbk.ac.uk).

A link to the posting can be found at:
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BEY041/lectureship-in-human-resource-management/.

or

http://jobs.bbk.ac.uk/fe/tpl_birkbeckcollege01.asp?s=4A515F4E5A565B1A&jobid=65206,3212825623&key=117050816&c=22793402343425&pagestamp=secxweisdtxwxoezri

23rd October 2017

Extraordinary Times in Politics and Society

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Extraordinary Times in Politics and Society

Speaker: Andy Beckett, Guardianjournalist, author of When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) and Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980–82 Made Modern Britain (2015).

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 16 November 6pm
Lecture Theatre G33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

Britain is living through a period of upheaval in in its party politics, economy, and everyday life, at a pace and on a scale not experienced since the infamous long crisis from the mid-70s to the early 80s. Andy Beckett, an acclaimed historian of those years, and a Guardian political journalist with a roving brief since 1997, will talk about the loss of faith in the Conservative party and the free-market ideas that have sustained it for 40 years; why this is happening now, and whether the Conservatives can reverse it; and about the opportunities this time of flux may be opening up for the Labour party and the wider British left.

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website:www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

20th October 2017

Jobs in HR/ER at Warwick

The Organisation and HRM group at the University of Warwick are currently recruiting in the area of HRM/Employment Relations. Links to the adverts are as follows:

Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management (80254-107)
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BEZ739/assistant-professor-in-human-resource-management-80254-107/

Associate Professor in Human Resource Management (80254-107)
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BEZ679/associate-professor-in-human-resource-management-80254-107/

 Potential applicants can contact Head of the OHRM Group, Kim Hoque (kim.hoque@wbs.ac.uk) for a confidential discussion. 

19th October 2017

Available Position in Labour Relations - Memorial University of Newfoundland

MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND

St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

FACULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

(AACSB International Accredited)

Labour Relations

Competition Number: VPA-BUSI-2016-001

Applications are invited for a tenure-track faculty position in Labour Relations at the rank of assistant professor with a proposed commencement date of July 1, 2018. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. The position is subject to budgetary approval.

The successful candidate will have a demonstrated record of scholarly output in Labour/Industrial Relations, and be able to teach in undergraduate and graduate (MBA, Master of Employment Relations) programs, and support the faculty’s M.Sc. and PhD specializations. The ability to also teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Human Resource Management (HRM) or a track record of HRM research would be an asset.

Applicants should have a PhD in Labour/Industrial Relations or a related field, and a demonstrated commitment to teaching and research in a university environment. Applicants must have demonstrated research productivity commensurate with the rank of assistant professor. If a successful candidate has not completed an earned doctorate, he/she shall be appointed to a regular term, non-renewable three-year appointment at the rank of assistant professor. If the candidate completes all the requirements for the doctorate during the first 24 months of the term appointment, he/she shall begin a tenure-track appointment following completion of the requirements of the degree.

The Faculty of Business Administration is a leader in management education and is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Approximately 1,300 students are registered in the undergraduate programs of the Faculty, with another 200 students completing graduate programs, including a PhD and M.Sc. in Management. For additional information about our Faculty, please visit our web site at www.business.mun.ca.

Memorial University is Newfoundland and Labrador’s only university, and plays an integral role in the educational and cultural life of the province. Offering diverse undergraduate and graduate programs to over 18,000 students, Memorial provides a distinctive and stimulating environment for learning. St. John’s is a safe, friendly city with great historic charm, a vibrant cultural life, and easy access to a wide range of outdoor activities. For further information about Memorial, please visit www.mun.ca.

The deadline to receive applications is January 31, 2018. Applications should include a curriculum vita, a cover letter, names and addresses of three references, statement of teaching interests, and statement of research interests, and three selected recent research publications (and/or working papers if the candidate does not have three publications). Please send applications electronically to:

Dr. Isabelle Dostaler, Dean

Faculty of Business Administration

Memorial University of Newfoundland

St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, A1B 3X5

E-mail: deanfba@mun.ca

REFERENCE: VPA-BUSI-2016-001

For further information telephone (709) 864-8851 or fax (709) 864-2467 or e-mail deanfba@mun.ca.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, citizens and permanent residents of Canada will be given priority. Memorial University is committed to employment equity and encourages applications from qualified women and men, visible minorities, Aboriginal people and persons with disabilities.

18th October 2017

Event: Unpaid Britain Project Report Launch

Following the publication in June of Unpaid Britain’s interim report on unpaid wages, the project’s final report will be launched on 30th November from 9am to 1pm at an event at Conway Hall in Central London.

Key elements of this report will be presented, showing the extent of non-payment, strategies deployed by some employers to withhold wages, the cost to unpaid workers and to the state, and evaluation of the means available for recovering unpaid sums. An audience of workers, union representatives, employers, NGOs, regulators, policy makers and academics will be invited to consider and respond to a range of recommendations aimed at combating unpaid wages. They will hear keynote addresses from the newly-appointed Director of Labour Market Enforcement (Sir David Metcalf) and a leading trade unionist, and testimony from some of those directly involved in cases.

If you wish to attend the event please register using Eventbrite, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate contacting Eva Herman on e.herman@mdx.ac.uk

12th October 2017

Book Launch Event: The Marketization of Employment Services. Dilemmas of Europe’s Work-First Welfare States

Dear colleagues,

Former Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU) director Ian Greer will be launching a new book based on a research project into services for the unemployed at the University of Greenwich on 17th November 2017.

"The Marketization of Employment Services. Dilemmas of Europe's Work-First Welfare States" includes contributions from WERU members Lisa Schulte and Graham Symon, and is coauthored Karen Breidal and Flemming Larsen from Aalborg University and Matthias Knuth from the Institut fuer Arbeit und Qualifikation in Duisburg. The research was funded by the Hans Boeckler Stiftung and the publisher is Oxford University Press.

The event will run from 4- 7 PM in Queen Anne Court, Room 063, in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, with food and drinks after the discussion. Commentators will be Chiara Benassi (King’s College London), John McInally (the Public and Commercial Services Union), and Matt Vidal (University of Loughborough).  Below, a description of the book.

To confirm attendance, please contact BusinessEvents@greenwich.ac.uk.

Best wishes,

Prof Sian Moore

Director of the Work and Employment Research Group (WERU)

The Marketization of Employment Services. Dilemmas of Europe’s Work-First Welfare States

Ian Greer, Karen Breidahl, Matthias Knuth, and Flemming Larsen

Oxford University Press, 2017

Across Europe, market mechanisms are spreading into areas where they did not exist before. In public administration, market governance is displacing other ways of coordinating public services. In social policy, the welfare state is retreating from its historic task of protecting citizens from the discipline of the market. In industrial relations, labor and management are negotiating with an eye to competitiveness, often against new non-union market players.

What is marketization, and what are its effects? This book uses employment services in Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain as a window to explore the rise of market mechanisms. Based on more than 100 interviews with funders, managers, front-line workers, and others, the authors discuss the internal workings of these markets and the organizations that provide the services.

This book gives readers new tools to analyse market competition and its effects. It provides a new conceptualization of the markets themselves, the dilemmas and tradeoffs that they generate, and the differing services and workplaces that result. It is aimed at students and researchers in the applied fields of social policy, public administration, and employment relations and has important implications for comparative political economy and welfare states.

12th October 2017

5th BUIRA PhD Symposium: Call for Papers

12th October 2017

Event: Challenges in Equality and Diversity in 2017

Challenges in Equality and Diversity in 2017

The University of Greenwich is proud to announce the launch of its university-wide Diversity Interest Group.

Our key-note speakers are:

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE

Professor Kim Hoque

The launch event will take place on Thursday 2nd November in QA063 at 6pm-8pm.

Join us for an evening of key-note speeches, Q&A, poster displays, canapes and wine!

To register, please email BusinessEvents@gre.ac.uk

12th October 2017

CIPD Applied Research Conference 2017

CIPD Applied Research Conference 2017

Thursday 30th November – Friday 1st December 2017

University of Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow.

Join us at the CIPD Applied Research Conference 2017!

The Applied Research Conference (ARC) is an annual meeting place for researchers and practitioners working in people management, employment policy and related fields. It is an interdisciplinary conference that covers a wide range of aspects of people management, employment, learning and development and organisational development. In all research papers presented, we set out to discuss the practical application of insights to organisational life and labour markets.

This year, ARC is hosted in Glasgow by University of Strathclyde Business School, named Business School of the Year 2016 in the Times Higher Education Awards.

The conference starts on the evening of Thurs 30 November with practical workshops. The main programme on Friday 1 December centres on 35 research papers grouped into 15 thematic streams. We are also delighted to welcome keynote presentations from Professor Kim Hoque and Dr Lisa Cameron MP talking on disability at work, and Professor Eva Demerouti on work engagement and job crafting.

ARC holds a unique place in strengthening links between academic research and HR practice. Join us to hear about cutting edge research, discuss how it can be applied in policy and practice, and network with like-minded researchers and practitioners.

The full programme and booking information is available at http://www.cipd.co.uk/arc

11th October 2017

‘HRM: Tensions, Limits and (Potential) Demise’ – Manchester Industrial Relations Society Meeting

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Arthur Priest Memorial Lecture/Joint Meeting with Manchester CIPD

HRM: Tensions, Limits and (Potential) Demise

Speaker: Professor Tony Dundon

Professor of Human Resource Management, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Co-author of Understanding Employment Relations (2011), Handbook of Research on Employee Voice (2014) and A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Employment Relations (2017)

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 19 October 6pm-7.30pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

This presentation will review a longstanding tension in human resource management concerning the extent to which HRM can both support workers while at the same time representing (and defending) the interests of employers. Contemporary developments in hyper-marketization and ideological individualism will suggest that HR policy and practice have advanced an exclusive pro-market rather than inclusive pro-business agenda, to the neglect of broader organisational and societal concerns. As a result, the role of HRM - both an area of professional practice and an academic discipline - is at risk of impoverishment. Implications for the future of the subject area and the way HRM is taught in mainstream business schools will be considered.

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website:www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

7th October 2017

Invitation to The University of Manchester's Work and Equalities Institute (WEI) Research Seminar

Invitation to The University of Manchester's Work and Equalities Institute (WEI) Research Seminar

Following the soft launch of the Work and Equalities Institute at the University of Manchester, we kick off our Research Seminar Series with a talk jointly organised with Salford Business School.

Sally Brett, Head of Equalities at the British Medical Association will deliver the talk "Women in the Workplace: the difference a generation makes". The talk reflects on the progress that has been made on gender equality in organisations over the past generation and considers the ongoing challenges facing women in the labour market. This talk is aimed at anyone interested in debates around gender equality in organisations, the gender pay gap, women’s career progression and specific challenges for women in medicine.

Date: Wednesday 11th October 2017

Time: 18:00 - 20:00 Hrs

Venue: University of Salford, MediaCityUK DPL, Room 0:11, MediaCityUK, Salford Quays, Salford M50 2HE

Registration via Eventbrite:http://bit.ly/2jFbNah (This event is FREEand requires registration for catering purposes).

Following the talk, there will be a drinks reception and networking opportunity.

6th October 2017

Book available via open access: Making work more equal: A new labour market segmentation approach

6th October 2017

The new issue of Historical Studies in Industrial Relations - no. 38 (2017) will be published shortly.

The new issue of Historical Studies in Industrial Relations - no. 38 (2017) will be published shortly.

Contents

Jean Jenkins                   Hands No Longer Wanted: Closure and the Moral Economy of Protest, Treorchy, South Wales 

Paul Smith                      The Law behind the Law: Rookes v. Barnard [1964], the Common Law and the Right to Strike 

Document                       The Trade Disputes Act 1965 

Otto Kahn Freund           Rookes v. Barnard — and After (1964) 

Charles McGuire              ‘Going for the Jugular’: The Steelworkers’ Banner and the 1980 national steelworkers’ strike in Britain

Michael Gold                   ‘A Clear and Honest Understanding’: Alan Fox and the Origins and Implications of Radical Pluralism  

William Brown                 Introduction to Alan Fox, ‘Corporatism and Industrial Democracy’ 

Alan Fox                         Corporatism and Industrial Democracy: The Social Origins of Present Forms and Methods in Britain and Germany (1977) 

Dave Lyddon                   Writing Trade Union History: The Case of the National Union of Public Employees

Book Reviews

David Howell                   Emmet O’Connor, Big Jim Larkin Hero or Wrecker?

Andrew Perchard         Lewis H. Mates, The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield (Manchester University Press: 2016)

John Eldridge                  John Macnicol, Neoliberalising Old Age

Chris Howell                    Steve Williams and Peter Scott (eds), Employment Relations under Coalition Government: The UK Experience, 2010–15

28th September 2017

NON-STANDARD EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS: DO THE TAYLOR REVIEW SOLUTIONS MEET THE CHALLENGES?

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES 2017-18
 
NON-STANDARD EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS: DO THE TAYLOR REVIEW SOLUTIONS MEET THE CHALLENGES?
 
WEDNESDAY 11 OCTOBER 2017. 15.00 – 18.00
 
VENUE: ROOM HH102, HAMILTON HOUSE, PARK VISTA, GREENWICH, SE10 9LZ
 
This seminar, the first of our series for 2017-18, considers the rise of non-standard forms of employment contract (the so-called ‘gig economy’), the impact for workers and the solutions proposed by the recent Taylor Review (July 2017). We have four presentations from those who have conducted recent work on non-standard working and the legal issues to provide the context for a debate on the recommendations of the Taylor Review. Our speakers include Dr Ewan McGaughey (Kings College London), Andrea Broughton (Institute of Employment Studies), Gill Dix (Acas) and Professor Sian Moore (University of Greenwich).  
 
Ewan McGaughey (Kings College London) will consider the recommendations of the Taylor Review (July 2017) and whether this was a squandered opportunity to address the problems of employment rights and tax evasion in today’s economy. He will consider the four main groups of Taylor’s recommendations. He will explain why relabelling employment statuses, more secondary legislation, cutting holiday pay, and ‘softening’ labour rights will solve little. He will also explain why a test for employment status highlighted by Taylor - ‘mutuality of obligation’ - has not formed part of binding UK Supreme Court jurisprudence since Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher. He will then discuss what the Taylor Review did not: gig economy fraud, and ensuring corporations do not evade rights and tax. Dr Ewan McGaughey joined King’s College as a lecturer in private law in 2014. He holds degrees from King’s, the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the London School of Economics, and has taught at UCL. He is also a research associate at the University of Cambridge Centre for Business Research. He was a Visiting Scholar at University of California, Berkeley from July to September 2016. He has appeared on Al Jazeera English, and French Parliament television (LCP Assemblée Nationale at 14:00), and speaks German reasonably well. 

Andrea Broughton (IES) will discuss her research in five sectors where atypical working is common - taxi/transport, professional/creative/high-skilled work, office/short online tasks/administration, physical low-skilled work and physical skilled work. Andrea Broughton is a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), where she has worked since 2006. She has a degree in modern languages and a Masters in international industrial relations and human resource management. She has more than 20 years of experience of research and writing in the areas of employment relations, working conditions and industrial relations, specialising in international comparative research. She is interested in a range of labour market issues and has recently been focusing on atypical ways of working. She recently carried out a research project on precarious work for the European Parliament.

Gill Dix (Head of Strategy, Acas) will discuss policy work by Acas on tackling the abuse of atypical working contracts, based on queries received by the telephone advisory service. Gill Dix has a background in public policy and social research working in the voluntary and public sectors and academia. She was Head of Research at Acas for 15 years before becoming Head of Strategy. She has particular interests in workplace conflict, voice and participation as well as wider questions relating to decision making in public services. Gill has authored many research reports, papers and book chapters and is an active contributor to the prestigious Workplace Employment Relations Survey series.

Sian Moore (University of Greenwich) will explore the experiences of workers on non-standard contracts in the context of the Taylor Review, based on her recent research. Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices celebrates the ‘largely successful’ ‘British Way’, characterised by the UK’s flexible labour market. While driven by concerns about worker exploitation and vulnerability, flexibility is also seen to complement individual lifestyle and preference and there is an assumption that the demographics of the labour market define choice and job characteristics. The report advocates ‘good quality’ work, but that this will be achieved through an essentially voluntarist approach. Sian Moore is Professor of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management and Director of the Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU) at the University of Greenwich. Her research centres on the relationship between gender and class, consciousness and activism. Her current research focus is work and employment in the logistics sector and on the pay and conditions of homecare workers.

This is an open free seminar and all are invited but please can you inform us if you are planning to attend from outside the University of Greenwich by contacting Professor Geoff White on wg08@gre.ac.uk.
 
HOW TO FIND US

Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, Greenwich, London SE10 9LZ
Telephone: +44 20 8331 9083 E-mail: i3centre@gre.ac.uk
 ​

28th September 2017

Job vacancy at the University of Sheffield

28th September 2017

36th INTERNATIONAL LABOUR PROCESS CONFERENCE

36th INTERNATIONAL LABOUR PROCESS CONFERENCE

Buenos Aires, 21-23 March, 2018

Call for submission of abstracts and symposium proposals

Deadline: 31st October through the Conference website: www.ilpc.org.uk

ILPC focuses on three moments of labour within the broader political economy: labour processes, labour markets and labour organizing.

The special theme of the 2018 event will be Class and the Labour Process.

Conference streams

1- The changing time and space of productive and reproductive processes (Sachetto, Alberti and Lisdero)

2- The hidden places of Production (Briken, Garvey, Stewart, Portes Virginio, Mitidiero Junior, Mies Bombardi, Mac Ionnrachtaigh, Avila Romero and Concheiro Bórquez)

3- Breaking boundaries and opening new struggles (Hammer, Fishwick and Chambers)

4- Artificial Intelligence (Grigera and Woodcock)

5- Precarious Work in Comparative Perspective (Kalleberg and Vallas)

6- Human Resource Practice in Labour Process and Workplace (Vincent, Bamber, Delbridge, Doellgast, Grady and Grugulis)

Keynote speakers

Prof. David Harvey (CUNY)

Prof. Leo Panitch (York university)

Prof. Sergio Leite Lopes (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)

Prof. Cinzia Arruzza (The New School)

For more information please check the Conference website (www.ilpc.org.uk) or email us at ilpc2018@gmail.com

22nd September 2017

University of Manchester Work and Equalities Institute Research Seminars

University of Manchester

Work and Equalities Institute

Research Seminars

2017-2018 – Semester 1

Women in the Workplace: the difference a generation makes

Sally Brett, British Medical Association

Wednesday 11^th October 2017

18:00 - 20:00 Hrs

University of Salford, MediaCityUK DPL, Room 0:11
MediaCityUK, Salford Quays, Salford M50 2HE

Registration via Eventbrite: http://bit.ly/2jFbNah

Abstract

The talk reflects on the progress that has been made on gender equality in organisations over the past generation and considers the ongoing challenges facing women in the labour market. This talk is aimed at anyone interested in debates around gender equality in organisations, the gender pay gap, women’s career progression and specific challenges for women in medicine. Following the talk, there will be a drinks reception and networking opportunity.

About the Speaker

Sally Brett is the Head of Equalities at the British Medical Association. Previously, she was Senior Policy Officer in the TUC’s Economic and Social Affairs Department, covering individual employment rights. She is also a trustee and co-chair of the charity Working Families, which campaigns on behalf of working parents and carers.

Honoured in the breach: unpaid wages as a business model

Nick Clark, Middlesex University Business School

Wednesday 18th October 2017

15:30 - 17:00 Hrs (coffee and tea at 15:15)

AMBS Precinct Room 1.1, Crawford House, University of Manchester

Abstract

The seminar will present some of the results of a two-year investigation into unpaid wages (the Unpaid Britain project). The various research methods used will be described, including the use of several novel data sources, and what they have revealed about the abuse of workers’ rights in certain sectors, as well as the use of litigation strategies and the abuse of limited liability by some employers. Enforcement (or otherwise) by workers, their unions and the state will be examined and evaluated, as will the extent of non- or under-payment. Evidence will suggest that the recent attention focussed on the “gig economy” may be a distraction from more fundamental failings in the labour market. Future research, policy development and pedagogy arising from the research will also be discussed.

About the Speaker

Currently leading a two year project examining unpaid wages in Britain (with a particular focus on the London labour market) Nick Clark’s background is in practice. He held several trade union research and policy posts over 26 years before joining the Working Lives Research Institute in 2009, moving on to Middlesex University in 2015. His academic research has built on practical knowledge of wage bargaining, labour markets, migrant workers and employment rights, using mixed methods of documentary and legal case research, primary and secondary data analysis, and interview. He is an experienced user of the ASHE, LFS and Family Resource Survey datasets. Lately, his work focuses on various groups of workers’ lived experience of the employment contract, as distinct from its form, and on employer strategies for increasing the rate of exploitation. Other recent work has included studies of EU migration to the UK for the Friederich Ebert Foundation, approaches to combatting forced labour for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and labour market intermediaries and trafficking for labour exploitation for EuroFound. He was a member of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority Board for the first four years of the GLA’s existence.  

Work, health and stress: some observations

Professor Tarani Chandola, University of Manchester

Wednesday 8^th November 2017

15:30 - 17:00 Hrs (coffee and tea at 15:15)

AMBS Precinct Room 1.1, Crawford House, University of Manchester

Abstract

The talk will feature some recent studies on work, health and stress, examining whether “any job is better than no job” when it comes to health and wellbeing outcomes. The importance of good quality work and advantaged labour market conditions for health and wellbeing will be highlighted. It will also feature some examples of what could be done to reduce stress in the workplace.

About the Speaker

Tarani is a Professor of Medical Sociology. He joined the University of Manchester and the Cathie Marsh Institute in April 2010, was the head of the Disciplinary Area of Social Statistics (2012-2014) and the director of the Cathie Marsh Institute (2013-2016). He was formerly at the UCL Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, and prior to that completed his PhD and post-doc at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He is a co-director of two ESRC centres: the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM: www.ncrm.ac.uk) and the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health (ICLS: www.ucl.ac.uk/icls). Tarani’s research is primarily on the social determinants of health, focusing on health inequalities and psychosocial factors, and the analysis of longitudinal cohort studies. Much of his research is on stress at work, and its effects on health and related biomarkers. He leads the academic network on Health, Work and Wellbeing (manchester.ac.uk/hawnn), sits on the Health & Work advisory board for Public Health England and chairs the scientific advisory board for the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change Centre (MiSoC).

22nd September 2017

Call for Papers for special stream at the 36th ILPC, Buenos Aires, 21-23 March 2018

Call for Papers for special stream at the 36^th ILPC, Buenos Aires, 21-23 March 2018

Breaking boundaries and opening new struggles:

Linking class and labour process to development in the Global South

Organisers:

Anita Hammer, Sociology of Work, De Montfort University, UK ahammer@dmu.ac.uk

Adam Fishwick, International Political Economy, DMU, UK adam.fishwick@dmu.ac.uk

Thomas Chambers, Social Anthropology, Oxford Brookes, UK tchambers@brookes.ac.uk

The special stream invites contributions that address the diversity of work and labour process in the Global South and its implications for class and development. Recent debates have sought to emphasise the return of class and its relevance to informal and precarious work in India (Agarwala 2013), to rethinking development in Global Production Networks (Campling et al. 2016), and to issues of collective action and resistance, production-social reproduction, and labour-state relations for understanding work and development across Latin America, South and East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. Our core question is: how does the primacy of work and the labour process improve our understanding of development in the Global South?

The novelty, theoretically and methodologically, of the stream is its comparative and cross-disciplinary approach, breaking down boundaries – both geographical and disciplinary – to research on labour, work, and development across the Global South. While addressing general themes of class relations of inequality at work and in development, papers are sought that provide conceptually and empirically situated analyses of work and labour. The diversity of contexts reinforces the relevance of comparative analysis. The aim throughout the sessions will be to draw out the connections and differences across different sites and regions, at the same time advancing discussion on attempts to redefine ‘development’ around a more ‘work-oriented’ or ‘labour-centred’ approach.

Papers are sought on following themes, though they are not restricted to these – either conceptually or empirically – with a substantive focus on country(ies) and region(s) of Latin America, South and East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. We strongly encourage papers from scholars based in these regions, as well as opening the stream to researchers working in other disciplines. Early career researchers and doctoral students are particularly encouraged to submit.

• Intersections of class with other social relations of caste, gender and ethnicity and implications for labour process across national and/or regional contexts
• Interlinkages between formal and informal and precarious work and labour in the Global South and implications for regulation, institutions and collective action
• Work and class in the context of dispossession, new regions and value chain construction in different regions/countries
• Blurred boundaries between production and social reproduction and implications for class and resistance
• Forms of collective action, workplace resistance, and trade union organising
• Alternative modes of organising work and the implications for construction of a ‘labour-centred’ development
• Comparative research methodologies or papers that address the implications of comparative and/or interdisciplinary approaches in the Global South
• South-South and North-South differences and points of comparison in work and labour across different sites and sectors
• Implications for development of any of the above issues relating to work and labour

Successful contributors will also be invited to submit papers to prepare a special issue in a journal or an edited book based on their contributions to the special stream.

For informal enquiries pl contact Anita Hammer at ahammer@dmu.ac.uk

This special stream is linked to the Labour, Work, and Development Network launched in 2016 and which brings together established as well as early career and doctoral scholars from a variety of disciplines – sociology, anthropology, international political economy and geography – conducting research on labour, work, and development across the Global South. For more details see: https://labouranddevelopment.wordpress.com/

The deadline for submissions of abstracts is 31st October 2017 via the ILPC website (www.ilpc.org.uk). Please mention the special stream title.

22nd September 2017

HRM: Tensions, Limits and (Potential) Demise’ – Manchester Industrial Relations Society Meeting

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Arthur Priest Memorial Lecture/Joint Meeting with Manchester CIPD

HRM: Tensions, Limits and (Potential) Demise

Speaker: Professor Tony Dundon

Professor of Human Resource Management, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Co-author of Understanding Employment Relations (2011), Handbook of Research on Employee Voice (2014) and A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Employment Relations (2017)

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 19 October 6pm-7.30pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

This presentation will review a longstanding tension in human resource management concerning the extent to which HRM can both support workers while at the same time representing (and defending) the interests of employers. Contemporary developments in hyper-marketization and ideological individualism will suggest that HR policy and practice have advanced an exclusive pro-market rather than inclusive pro-business agenda, to the neglect of broader organisational and societal concerns. As a result, the role of HRM - both an area of professional practice and an academic discipline - is at risk of impoverishment. Implications for the future of the subject area and the way HRM is taught in mainstream business schools will be considered.

20th September 2017

Climate Change and Work PhD Scholarship in University of Westminster

Climate Change and Work PhD Scholarship in University of Westminster

Three years, full time - £16,000 annual stipend plus fee waiver, see https://www.westminster.ac.uk/courses/research-degrees/research-areas/business/research-studentships

A full-time University of Westminster PhD Studentship is available to candidates with Home fee status in the Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE) starting in January 2018. This PhD studentship is part of ProBE’s programme of research on Climate Change and Work, conducted in partnership with the York University, Toronto, funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), led by Professor Carla Lipsig Mummé and entitled Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces (ACW), an international perspective (see see www.adaptingcanadianwork.ca). The programme aims to explore the role of work and global warming and the role of organised workers and trade unions as a force for adaptation. ProBE is responsible for the international dimension, with projects on green transition strategies and worker agency in Europe, the US, and at a global level, as well as in the built environment. The applicant is expected to have broad knowledge of the field and some experience of quantitative and qualitative research. The student will be asked to do 6 hours of work per week as a research assistant to support ProBE’s ACW research and enhance REF 2020 submission. There may also be opportunities for exchange visits to Canada.

The Studentship consists of a home/EU fee waiver and a stipend of £16,000 per annum over three years of PhD study.

Entry requirements

Eligible candidates will hold at least an upper second class honours degree and a Master’s degree. Candidates whose secondary level education has not been conducted in the medium of English should also demonstrate evidence of appropriate English language proficiency, normally defined as 6.5 in IELTS (with not less than 6.0 in any of the individual elements).

Read the University’s standard entry requirements.

Further enquiries

For an informal discussion, contact: Dr Kristina Vasileva, PhD Admissions Coordinator, T: +44 (0)20 7911 5000 ext 66771, E: k.vasileva@westminster.ac.uk; or Professor Linda Clarke, ProBE Director, Tel: 0044 (0)20350 66528, email: clarkel@westminster.ac.uk

Deadline: Monday 16 October 2017

17th September 2017

HRM: Tensions, Limits and (Potential) Demise Manchester Industrial Relations Society Arthur Priest Memorial Lecture/Joint Meeting with Manchester CIPD

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

The new Manchester Industrial Relations Society colour brochure with full details of the 2017-18 programme of meetings and speakers is now available on the Society’s newly redesigned website: www.mirs.org.uk

We have a very impressive line-up of topics and speakers, starting with Professor Tony Dundon (Alliance Manchester Business School and co-author of A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Employment Relations, 2017) speaking on HRM: Tensions, Limits and (Potential) Demise (joint meeting with the CIPD), Andy Beckett (Guardian journalist and author of When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) and Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980–82 Made Modern Britain (2015)’, speaking on Extraordinary Times in Politics and Society, and Alex Wood (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford) speaking on The Gig Economy and Employment Relations. Other meetings on topics such as Brexit, discrimination law, and employment relations analytical perspectives, follow.

Meanwhile check out the amazing list of annual programme of meetings and speakers Manchester Industrial Relations Society have had over the last 53 years. The topics are a weather vane of the key industrial relations issues of the day, and the speakers include some of the most prestigious academic figures within the field as well as leading practitioners: http://www.mirs.org.uk/mirs-archives.php

Manchester Industrial Relations Society Arthur Priest Memorial Lecture/Joint Meeting with Manchester CIPD

HRM: Tensions, Limits and (Potential) Demise

Speaker: Professor Tony Dundon

Professor of Human Resource Management, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Co-author of Understanding Employment Relations (2011), Handbook of Research on Employee Voice (2014) and A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Employment Relations (2017)

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 19 October 6pm-7.30pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

This presentation will review a longstanding tension in human resource management concerning the extent to which HRM can both support workers while at the same time representing (and defending) the interests of employers. Contemporary developments in hyper-marketization and ideological individualism will suggest that HR policy and practice have advanced an exclusive pro-market rather than inclusive pro-business agenda, to the neglect of broader organisational and societal concerns. As a result, the role of HRM - both an area of professional practice and an academic discipline - is at risk of impoverishment. Implications for the future of the subject area and the way HRM is taught in mainstream business schools will be considered.

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

15th September 2017

BUIRA Conference 2017

Photos and a short report from the 2017 conference in Portsmouth 'The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers' can now be viewed on the BUIRA website https://www.buira.org/conference/7

Stewart Johnstone

15th September 2017

ILERA World Congress: Deadline submission of abstracts extended until 30 September

Greetings,

This is the official announcement from the Secretariat of ILERA World Congress 2018.

We are so pleased to inform you that the deadline for Abstract/Session Proposal Submission has been extended to September 30, 2017. Please refer to the following important dates:

  1. Call for Papers
    - Abstract Submission Deadline: September 30, 2017
    - Notification of Abstract Acceptance: October 31, 2017
    - Full Paper Submission Deadline: January 31, 2018
    - Notification of Session Allocation: March 31, 2018

    2. Call for Organized Sessions
    - Session Proposal Submission Deadline: September 30, 2017
    - Notification of Session Proposal Acceptance: October 31, 2017
    - Abstract Submission Deadline: January 31, 2018
    - Notification of Session Allocation: March 31, 2018
  * Please note that the scholarship application deadline has also been extended to September 30, 2017.

In addition, please note that the scholarship application deadline has also been extended to September 30, 2017.

With your meaningful participation, the congress will be a valuable platform to seek the directivity for the new labor environment caused by the 4th industrial revolution under the theme “Employment for a Sustainable Society: What Is To Be Done?”.

  ◆ Track 1: Collective Voices and Social Dialogue for a Better Future
  ◆ Track 2: HRM Challenges and Responses for the Changing Workplace
  ◆ Track 3: Labor Market Dualization and Institutional Responses
  ◆ Track 4: Workforce Diversity, Labor Market Inequality and Social Integration
  ◆ Track 5: Work and Employment Relations in Emerging Market Economies
  ◆ Track 6: The Future of Work

For more detailed information regarding Abstract/Session Proposal Submission, please visit the website:
    - Call for Papers: http://www.ilera2018.org/abstract/submission.html
    - Call for Organized Sessions: http://www.ilera2018.org/abstract/organ_session.html

If you have any questions or comments on this congress, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you.

11th September 2017

New book : The Emerging Industrial Relations of China'

Just published on industrial relations in contemporary China:

'The Emerging Industrial Relations of China', edited by William Brown
(Cambridge University) and Chang Kai (Renmin University of China),
Cambridge University Press, Hardback, £68.

Faced with rising worker aspirations and dissent, the past decade has
seen the Chinese government changing its relationship with both
employers and workers. Employers are developing their own organisations
and the once monolithic trade union has become more internally flexible.
In this book a new generation of Chinese scholars draw on fieldwork and
surveys to analyse developments in trade union organisation and employer
strategy, in collective consultation and employee participation, and in
the role of government and the treatment of strikes. It concludes with a
comparison of the Chinese experience with that in Vietnam and Russia by
Tim Pringle (SOAS).

Tom Kochan of MIT praises the book as '... destined to be the go-to
textbook and scholarly resource on this subject'.

11th September 2017

Job vacancy at Monash University

Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor - Human Resource Management/Employment Relations

8th September 2017

Job vacancy at Alliance Manchester Business School

SENIOR LECTURER IN EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS LAW

Closing Date : 24/09/2017.
Employment Type : Permanent.
School/Directorate : Alliance Manchester Business School.
Division : Alliance MBS - PMO Division.
Hours Per week : Full time.
Salary : £39,992 to £58,149 per annum according to experience.
Location : Oxford Road, Manchester.
Job Reference : HUM-10564.

Applications are invited from those with teaching and research interests in employment law. Teaching will comprise core employment law modules on the School’s undergraduate and postgraduate programmes (including the CIPD accredited MSc in HRM and Industrial Relations). You will be expected to make a significant research contribution in terms of grants, publications and impact, as well as to collaborate with colleagues across the School in the newly established Work and Equalities Institute.

As an equal opportunities employer, we welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons. As the School is committed to Athena SWAN principles, we would particularly welcome applications from women, who are currently under-represented at this grade. All appointments will be made on merit.

Further details here: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BDT553/senior-lecturer-in-employment-law/

8th September 2017

job vacancy

25th August 2017

job vacancies

JOBS

Durham University Business School will be advertising a range of posts in management, including Employment Relations and HRM, in September.  Posts will be available at Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professorial levels.  Details will be available, once posted in September, on

https://www.dur.ac.uk/jobs/  

25th August 2017

Special Issue on Migration and Work

Journal of Industrial Relations special issue on Migration and Work

Dear colleagues

This is a reminder that the deadline for submission of articles to the Journal of Industrial Relations special issue on Migration and Work is 1 October 2017.

The Call for Papers is at the following link: http://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/JIR/JIR_migration_and_work_SI_CfP.pdf 

Regards,

Guest Editors:

Stephen Clibborn - stephen.clibborn@sydney.edu.au

Chris F Wright - chris.f.wright@sydney.edu.au

25th August 2017

Are you paying your BUIRA membership twice?

Now that the membership subscriptions are now collected by card payment via Stripe we have now cleared up all of the confusion regarding membership rates and all members are now paying the correct amount for their membership type.

However there are still a small but significant number of members who are paying via Stripe but also have a standing order with us, i.e. in effect paying twice. We cannot do anything from this end to stop that, it is the individuals arrangement with their banks and the bank sends the payment - we don't collect it like a direct debit. Therefore could you all please check and if you still retain a standing order for BUIRA please cancel it.

If you have any queries please contact stephen.procter@ncl.ac.uk (Treasurer).

21st August 2017

Women, Collectivism and Wellbeing

Gender, Work and Organization

10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference Sydney, 13-16 June 2018

 Women, Collectivism and Wellbeing

Convenors

Julie Douglas, Auckland University of Technology, NEW ZEALAND Katherine Ravenswood, Auckland University of Technology, NEW ZEALAND Gill Kirton, Queen Mary University of London, UNITED KINGDOM

Cathy Brigden, RMIT, AUSTRALIA

Trine Pernille Larsen, FAOS, DENMARK

This stream calls for papers that critically analyse the role of the collective in employee wellbeing, and particularly women, including but not limited to aging and immigrant women.

There are few that would argue that while women have progressed in paid work in many countries there are still gaps in how gender in work and organisations is understood, researched and acted upon. One such example is the concept of wellbeing and its manifestation in the workplace especially in relation to improved performance (Spence, 2015). For some organisations this is viewed as the icing on the cake in their toolbox of human resource strategies (Guest, 2017; Laine, 2015). However, as some jurisdictions introduce the concept of work-related stress into health and safety legislation, there has been a flurry of renewed interest in not just the health but also the wellbeing of employees.

The concept of wellbeing is contested, and the wellbeing literature has been criticised because it has largely failed to consider the broader psychosocial view of work and instead focused on the individual’s wellbeing, laying ‘blame’ for poor outcomes on the individual’s capacity and characteristics, such as ‘resilience’ (Guest, 2017). A further critique of the wellbeing literature is the assumption that wellbeing is a homogenous experience across a homogenous worker, the typical ‘male’ worker. Scarce research has investigated the role of gender in wellbeing for employees. Along with disrupting the ‘ideal worker’ by interrogating gender, other absences include gender diverse/LGBTIQ+ and Indigenous workers, aging workers, migrant workers and those with a disability (Brougham, Haar, and Roche, 2015; Foster, 2017).

We argue that a shift in focus is needed to look at the role of the collective in relation to wellbeing: how can organised and informal groups of workers challenge the managerial wellbeing narrative that serves to individualise wellbeing and reduce it to individual coping strategies? This will provide the critical lens necessary to fully understand the processes and power play that impact on employee wellbeing at work and within organisations. Furthermore, this critical lens must include a gendered analysis that engages with specific conditions/practices that diminish women’s wellbeing at work, for example, sexual harassment, everyday sexism/racism and other insidious forms of oppression which would expand the debate about workplace wellbeing.

A logical step is to leverage research on unions and their role in the employment relationship, as unions’ primary goal is to protect and improve workers’ conditions and wages. Also to consider is the role of health and safety representatives which may also be collective agents. There has been considerable work on unions’ role in health and safety, parental leave entitlements and flexible work arrangements (Ravenswood & Markey, 2011; Williamson, 2014: Heery, 1996). Research has also looked at women’s representation and structures within unions themselves (Parker & Douglas, 2010; Brigden, 2013). Further research has also shown a connection between collective activity and general wellbeing at work – however this latter research has failed to take a gender lens to its analysis (Knudsen, Busck and Lind, 2011). Collectivism (be that formal union structures or otherwise) enables a voice in workplaces and may well provide a point of advocacy in the improvement of workers’ wellbeing (Brougham, Haar, and Roche, 2015; Macky & Boxall, 2009). But what of women, and gender diverse people and their wellbeing?

This stream seeks papers that critically analyse the role of the collective in employee wellbeing, in particular for women and wider gender diversity. While the collective is traditionally understood as union representation, critical papers that explore the role of other collective structures within work and organisations, such as staff networks or collective civil society groups (for example, Equal Pay Coalitions, women’s centres, workers centres) would also be welcome. Some suggestions are:

• Union role in wellbeing & gender diversity
• Union role in women, equality, harassment
• Unions & work/life balance
• Union ability to bring a critical eye – a strength of unions
• Disability and wellbeing/wellbeing programmes
• Historic perspective on women, collectivism and well being
• LGBTIQ+ issues and collectivism and well being
• Other collective groups such as staff networks & staff advocacy groups and their role in supporting wellbeing &

For submission details go to: www.mq.edu.au/events/gwosydney

For stream enquiries please contact Julie Douglas: julie.douglas@aut.ac.nz

References

Brigden, C. (2013) “A Fine and Self-Reliant Group of Women”: Women's Leadership in the Female Confectioners Union. Labour History: a journal of labour and social history 104, pp 49-64.

Brougham, D., Haar, J., & Roche, M. (2015). Work-family enrichment, collectivism, and workplace cultural outcomes: a study of New Zealand Maori. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 40(1), 19-34.

Foster, D. (2017). The health and well-being at work agenda: good news for (disabled) workers or just a capital idea? Work, Employment and Society, DOI: 10.1177/0950017016682458.

Guest, D. (2017). Human resource management and employee well-being: towards a new analytical framework. Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), pp22-38. Heery, E. (1996). The new new unionism. Contemporary Industrial Relations: A Critical Analysis, 175-202.

Knudsen, H., Busck, O., & Lind, J. (2011). Work environment quality: the role of workplace participation and democracy. Work, Employment and Society, 25(3), pp379-396.

Laine, P. (2015). Developing wellbeing at work: Emerging dilemmas. International Journal of Wellbeing, 5(2), pp91-108.

Macky, K. & Boxall, P. (2009). Employee well-being and union membership. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 34(3), pp14-25.

Parker, J., & Douglas, J. (2010). Can women’s structures help New Zealand and UK trade unions’ revival?. Journal of Industrial Relations, 52(4), 439-458.

Ravenswood, K. & Markey, R. (2011). The role of unions in achieving a family- friendly workplace. Journal of Industrial Relations, 53(4), pp486-503.

Spence, G. (2015). Workplace wellbeing programs: If you build it they may not come…because it’s not what they really need! International Journal of Wellbeing, 5(2), pp109-124.

Williamson, S. (2014). Gender equality bargaining: Developing theory and practice.

Journal of Industrial Relations

20th August 2017

Researching diversity

Call for Papers

Association of Industrial Relations Academics in Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ)

2018 Conference Stream: ‘Researching Diversity’

7-9 February 2018, Adelaide, Australia

Convenors:

Dr Susan Ressia, Lecturer, Griffith Business School, Griffith University (s.ressia@griffith.edu.au)

Dr Shalene Werth, Senior lecturer, School of Management and Enterprise, USQ (shalene.werth@usq.edu.au)

Description:

The stream will address the ongoing issues related to gender and other differences as they are experienced in the context of the workplace. Visible and invisible identities can provoke particular reactions from colleagues when they are disclosed. Individuals who exhibit difference, for example, in their health status, migrant or racial background, gender, age or sexuality, risk being stigmatised or stereotyped in the labour market. Goffman shows that individuals with stigmatising attributes are ‘very careful to show that in spite of appearances they are very sane, very generous, very sober, very masculine [or feminine]… in short they are… nice persons like ourselves in spite of the reputation of their kind’ (1986, p. 110). Socially advocated ‘codes of conduct provide the stigmatised individual… with recipes for an appropriate attitude regarding the self’ (Goffman 1986, p. 110). Where individuals have an invisible stigmatising identity they might have a choice about disclosure and attempt to appear ‘normal’.  Normality ‘designates the state of affairs where everyone can get on with their business and the taken-for-granted world is not visibly shaken’ (Pinder 1995, p. 210). In the work environment there is an expectation of ‘normality’ that may exclude diversity groups, resulting in their experiences of less desirable workforce outcomes. These outcomes can be experienced in different and complex ways, when multiple visible and/or visible identities intersect. Thus, as Crenshaw (1989) describes, the intersection of various characteristics work in ways to produce inequalities and disadvantage for people who do not fit the dominant norm.

This stream invites papers that examine both the positive and negative experiences of diversity groups, which might include, but is not limited to, gender, culture, race, religion, migrant background, disability, health status, or sexual identity, and the intersections between them. The stream also welcomes papers that cover the various methodologies used in researching these diversity groups.

The aim of this stream is to expand into the broader field of diversity, and so reflects today’s social and cultural environments where we are witnessing a rapid change and transformation in the diverse nature of the workforce, while the workforce issues pertaining to these groups are often unacknowledged, misunderstood, overlooked or ignored.

Crenshaw, K. 1989 ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, pp. 138–167.

Goffman, E 1986, Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity, Simon & Schuster Inc, New York.

Pinder, R 1995, 'Bringing back the body without the blame? The experience of ill and disabled people at work', Sociology of Health and Illness, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 605-31.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Abstracts
An abstract should set out the title and authors. The main body of the abstract (max 250 words) should then follow. It should succinctly set out the research questions, the methods used, the theoretical focus and the major conclusions. Please include references.

Deadline for abstract submission: Friday 15 September 2017.

Notification of acceptance: Friday 29 September 2017.

Paper proposals
If you wish to present a paper, please submit an abstract in accordance with the requirements set out above, but also indicating that you intend to submit a full paper. Please indicate whether the paper is to be refereed or non-refereed.

Deadline for paper proposal: Friday 15 September 2017.

Notification of acceptance: Friday 29 September 2017.

Submitted papers
If a paper proposal is accepted, the final paper must be submitted by Friday 27 October 2017 (refereed papers) or Friday 24 November (non-refereed papers). The paper should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words in length (including references, endnotes, tables, appendices and abstract). Please adhere strictly to the conference guidelines. For more information about AIRAANZ: http://www.airaanz.org/airaanz-conference-2018.html

20th August 2017

HRM Jiscmail

HRM researchers might be interested in joining the recently re-activated HRM jiscmail:  HRM@jiscmail.ac.uk.  The email list is for news relating to HRM research.  For details and to sign up please see: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=HRM. 

20th August 2017

New BUIRA Study Group: Equality and Diversity in Work and Employment

New BUIRA Study Group: Equality and Diversity in Work and Employment

The BUIRA AGM approved the creation of a new BUIRA study group dedicated to Equality and Diversity in Work and Employment. The group will be jointly convened by Ana Lopes (Newcastle University) and Jenny Rodriguez (University of Manchester).

This dedicated study group aims to be a forum for BUIRA members and associates to discuss issues related to equality and diversity in work and employment, as well as cognate topics (e.g. intersectionality, inclusiveness) and collectively shape the research agenda in this area within the field of industrial and employment relations. The group is looking to develop and sustain a network of academics and practitioners with an interest and work in the area of equality and diversity in work and employment. We invite BUIRA members and associates interested in these topics to join the group’s mailing list, and to send ideas and suggestions for future activities. To join the study group’s mailing list, please e-mail ana.lopes@ncl.ac.uk and jenny.rodriguez@manchester.ac.uk.

21st July 2017

ewly published via Palgrave: 'Employment Relations in Financial Services: An Exploration of the Employee Experience After the Financial Crash'

Newly published via Palgrave:  'Employment Relations in Financial Services: An Exploration of the Employee Experience After the Financial Crash' by Professor Gregor Gall, University of Bradford

See http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137395375

Synopsis: This book describes and analyses the impact of the 2007-2008 financial crisis upon the working conditions of employees in the financial services sector in Britain. It tells the story of workers being made to pay the price for a crisis that was not of their own making, but nevertheless caused a deleterious impact on their employment security, remuneration and working conditions. Evidence of fighting back against this has been sparse so that the response of employees is best characterised as ‘fright’ (grudgingly working harder and longer), ‘flight’ (leaving the sector through redundancy), and ‘falling in line’ (accepting the diktat of performance managements systems).  Through this book we learn the reasons behind this acquiescence, with its detailed attention to topics such as the stunted development of labour unionism, the prevalence of union-management partnerships, and the occurrence of employment insecurity and labour shedding. Providing a valuable insight into the effects of the financial crash, Employment Relations in Financial Services will be useful to academics, students and also trade unionists.

Please consider ordering a copy for your library.

21st July 2017

Academy of Social Sciences

At the AGM it was agreed that BUIRA would become a member of the Academy of Social Sciences. For more information about the Academy see https://www.acss.org.uk/

The June newsletter can be accessed below.

https://www.acss.org.uk/academy-ebulletin-june-2017/

You can also subscribe to future bulletins, Twitter etc.

21st July 2017

BUIRA Conference 2017

Thanks to all who attended the 2017 BUIRA Conference and to the organising team at Portsmouth for hosting an excellent event.  Pictures and reports from the conference will be available in due course on the BUIRA website www.buira.org and our Facebook and Twitter accounts @buiraonline.  

11th July 2017

Contact details - Phil Almond

Hi all,

I have moved to Loughborough University, please update your contacts as appropriate.

Thanks,

Phil Almond,

Professor of International Management,

Institute of International Management,

Loughborough University London,

3 Lesney Avenue, The Broadcast Centre, Here East Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London E15 2GZ

p.almond@lboro.ac.uk

10th July 2017

Reminder: Special issue "Trade unions and democracy" in memory of Giulio Regeni - deadline 15th September

Dear colleagues,

We would like to remind you about the attached call for papers for the special issue of “Economic and Industrial Democracy” on “Trade unions and democracy” dedicated to Giulio Regeni. As many of you might know, Giulio was a Cambridge PhD student who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in January 2016 in Cairo during his research on Egyptian independent trade unions.

We want to honor his memory by collecting what we hope will be high quality research on the themes he was passionate about.

Please consider submitting to this special issue and share with anybody who might be interested in contributing. The submission deadline is on 15^th September 2017.

Kind regards,

Lucio Baccaro, Chiara Benassi and Guglielmo Meardi

10th July 2017

Civic and labour engagements as avenues for the integration and social cohesion of migrants: exploring the intersections of race, class and gender and marginalized identities

Civic and labour engagements as avenues for the integration and social
cohesion of migrants: exploring the intersections of race, class and
gender and marginalized identities

This seminar will focus on how identity and oppression mobilise people
to act, more specifically, how these different forms of oppression
intersect such that individuals are able to come together to act for the
common good.

Wednesday 6 September 2017: 10am-5pm

University of Leeds Business School, Room 1.02, Clarendon Road, Leeds,
LS2 9JT

All welcome
But please register in advance to assist with catering by using this
link: https://tinyurl.com/y7dngkgw

Programme

10.00:Coffee and registration

10.15:Welcome

10.30-11.30:Gabriella Alberti: Trade union strategies towards organizing
migrant workers in the UK: A call for a multi-level intersectional approach

11.30-12.30: Jean Jenkins: A Woman’s Work: Organisation and Resistance
in the Indian Garment Sector

12.30-1.30: Lunch

1.30-2.30: Joyce Jiang: The limitations of community organising: An
analysis of intra-community tensions among Polish immigrant workers in
South Somerset, UK

2.30-3.30: Heather Connolly: Class and identity politics in the
representation of migrant workers: comparing France and the UK

3.30-3.45pm: Coffee

3.15pm-4.45pm: Julie Hearn: Migrant cleaners fight for survival at the
University of London

4.45pm-5pm: Final comments

10th July 2017

Leverhulme workshop ‘The changing labour relations in globalised China’ 8th August

Leverhulme workshop ‘The changing labour relations in globalised China’ 8th August 

To mark the completion of the Leverhulme International Network project 'Collective pay determination and the changing labour relations in globalised China', we are going to hold a research workshop 'The changing labour relations in globalised China' on 8th August 2017 at Keele University. 

This one-day workshop will see the project team presenting major findings, with a number invited speakers taking part in presentations and discussions. Participants will include labour relations researchers based in a number of British and Chinese universities, and institutional representatives from trade unions and government bodies.

Confirmed speakers include Professor William Brown (Cambridge), Dr Tim Pringle (SOAS), Mr Malcolm Boswell (ACAS), Professor Chang Kai (Renmin University of China), Professor Qiao Jian (China Institue of Labor Relations), Professor Feng Xiliang (Capital University of Economics and Business, China), and so on. Professor Brown will deliver a keynote speech ‘The Emerging Industrial Relations of China’. A more detailed programme will be announced in due course.

All welcome. If you would like to attend please email the Network Facilitator Agnes Zhang (y.zhang1@keele.ac.uk) to confirm your place by 17 July 2017. Attendance is free but reservation will help us prepare catering arrangement.

Workshop venue: Salvin Room, Keele Hall, Keele University, ST5 5BG

Provisional time: 9:30 – 17:00

Date: 8 August 2017

10th July 2017

ILERA WORLD CONGRESS 2018: Call for Papers/Organized Sessions and Information for Scholarships

See http://www.ilera2018.org/ims/bbs/board.php?bo_table=notice&wr_id=4

10th July 2017

From Phil Almond and Anne-marie Greene re Professorial Redundancies at De Montfort University:

From Phil Almond and Anne-marie Greene re Professorial Redundancies at De Montfort University:

As many of you will be aware, on 3rd May all three professors in the Department of HRM, Leicester Business School at De Montfort University, were handed redundancy letters. The rationale given for these redundancies was that DMU wants to align research with areas of high student recruitment and growth in teaching, and “employment relations” is apparently not one of those research areas.

Many of you will note the irony of this happening in an institution that set up a research centre in comparative employment relations (CERC) less than a year ago, where the Department made the largest contribution to the REF2014 submission for UoA19 in the School and was on track to do so again for REF2021, and where members of the department have brought in substantial research income. The Department had a vibrant and productive research community within our research group CROWE (Contemporary Research in Organisations, Work and Employment)-one of the few places in the UK where an employment relations research group still exists. For a small group, we thought we were doing quite well. Obviously, in retrospect, too well.

This redundancy came as a complete shock to us, which we are all still now struggling to come to terms with. This has not been made any better by the utter brutality of the treatment of DMU in their consultations with us. We were forced to make a decision about voluntary redundancy within 3 weeks of the initial notification. There have been no proper objective reasons given for our redundancies. They have refused to allow us to continue being involved in the supervision of our PhD students, including those who are coming to their last year of registration. Finally, there has been no communication to the Department or the School about our redundancies.

A number of people in the field, have offered support in some kind of collective response, and we thank you for this. However, after what has been a very difficult period, we have each taken the decision to take voluntary redundancy as the only option in the circumstances. In many respects, we have no interest in trying to save our jobs within an institution that does not want the kind of research that we do. We will all be leaving the University on June 30th.

This is a very sad end to our time at DMU and a very sad outcome for employment relations as a field of study. We are extremely anxious about the future for our colleagues left behind in the Department and students of our courses left behind at DMU. You will no doubt have seen the recent advertisement for L/SL in HRM at DMU, including reference to research within the job description, only 2 weeks after our voluntary redundancy applications were accepted. The utter callousness of this action aside, we have to say that we cannot see how DMU can be a place where research active academics in our area could have a future, and would recommend to potential applicants and their mentors/advisers that they investigate the situation carefully.

…
Phil Almond will be joining Loughborough University London as Professor of International Management, and will remain active in employment relations research, including through his roles with the CRIMT network. CERC supporters will be contacted shortly about future developments.

Anne-marie Greene will be joining the University of Leicester as Professor of Work, Employment and Diversity on September 1st 2017 and can be contacted in the intervening period on profamg@gillam-greene.com
…

We will continue to defend research in our field in any way we can.

25th June 2017

BUIRA 2017 Conference Schedule

BUIRA 2017 Conference Schedule

BUIRA Conference 2017, Portsmouth, 28^th-30^th June

We are looking forward to to the BUIRA conference next week at the University of Portsmouth.Please check the updated version of the conference schedule by following this link xxxx

Further information about the conference is available here:

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

25th June 2017

Message from Peter Ackers

I'm leaving De Montfort University at the end of this June & this is my new  email address: peter.ackers1@virginmedia.com

As you may be aware, all 3 Professors in the HRM Department were put into a Redundancy process.

I am taking retirement, but plan to continue writing on British IR & Labour History (broadly defined), including Hugh Clegg & Pluralism & Biography & Autobiography more widely.

19th June 2017

BUIRA 2017 Conference

BUIRA Conference 2017, Portsmouth, 28^th-30^th June

We are very much looking forward to welcoming BUIRA members next week to the University of Portsmouth for the 2017 annual conference.

The conference will include two plenary sessions. The first plenary, on the implications of 'Brexit' for employment relations, will take place in the afternoon of Wednesday 28 June, and will include contributions from Professor Charles Woolfson (Linköping University) and Hannah Reed (TUC). The second plenary, on the 'gig economy', will take place in the afternoon of Thursday 29 June, and will include contributions from Dr Alex Wood (Oxford), Uma Rani (ILO), Jeremias Prassl (Oxford) and Mags Dewhurst (IWGB).

The conference also features two special symposia: one on Kelly’s Rethinking Industrial Relations; and another on alternatives to state socialism.

Please remember to register for the conference in advance.

If you don't register by Thursday 22nd June, then we cannot guarantee that you will be able to attend the Conference Dinner on the evening of Thursday 29th June.

This is because the venue, which is in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, is part of the Naval Base, and we are required to supply the names of delegates to the venue in advance (for security reasons).

Details of BUIRA 2017, including the conference schedule, can be obtained from the BUIRA website:

https://www.buira.org/conference/7

Further information about the conference is available here:

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

Registration and campus accommodation can be arranged through the Portsmouth online store:

http://onlinestore.port.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/portsmouth-business-school/organisation-studies-and-hr/british-universities-industrial-relations-association-buira-annu

BUIRA Conference 2017, Portsmouth, 28^th-30^th June

We are very much looking forward to welcoming BUIRA members to the University of Portsmouth for the 2017 annual conference.

The conference will include two plenary sessions. The first plenary, on the implications of 'Brexit' for employment relations, will take place in the afternoon of Wednesday 28 June, and will include contributions from Professor Charles Woolfson (Linköping University) and Hannah Reed (TUC). The second plenary, on the 'gig economy', will take place in the afternoon of Thursday 29 June, and will include contributions from Dr Alex Wood (Oxford), Uma Rani (ILO), Jeremias Prassl (Oxford) and Mags Dewhurst (IWGB).

The conference also features two special symposia: one on Kelly’s Rethinking Industrial Relations; and another on alternatives to state socialism.

Please remember to register for the conference in advance.

If you don't register by Thursday 22nd June, then we cannot guarantee that you will be able to attend the Conference Dinner on the evening of Thursday 29th June.

This is because the venue, which is in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, is part of the Naval Base, and we are required to supply the names of delegates to the venue in advance (for security reasons).

Details of BUIRA 2017, including the conference schedule, can be obtained from the BUIRA website:

https://www.buira.org/conference/7

Further information about the conference is available here:

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

Registration and campus accommodation can be arranged through the Portsmouth online store:

http://onlinestore.port.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/portsmouth-business-school/organisation-studies-and-hr/british-universities-industrial-relations-association-buira-annual-conference

al-conference

19th June 2017

Register by June 21st for BUIRA conference

I wanted to draw your attention to registering early for the forthcoming British Universities Industrial Relations Association conference this year if you are attending.

The theme of BUIRA 2017 is the Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers. The conference will take place a little over a year after a referendum which resulted in a narrow vote in favour of the UK leaving the European Union (EU). Therefore it will provide an ideal opportunity for participants not only to explore and discuss the future of industrial relations in the UK outside of the EU, but also to consider the portents for industrial relations in Europe and around the world in general. New borders may be springing up, and existing borders hardening, but the frontiers of industrial relations continue to be pushed back, and extended, in some notable ways.

We have received an amazing set of papers that reflect these issues. We also have two fantastic symposiums with one entitled 'Rethinking Industrial Relations' which is a set of papers revisiting 20 years (!) of John Kelly's original contribution with John finalising the discussion in responding to all of the papers in the symposium. 

Also, our Guest speakers include:

Professor Charles Woolfson (Linköping University) and Hannah Reed (Trades Union Congress) on the implications of ‘Brexit’ for employment relations

Mags Dewhurst (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) and Alex Wood (Oxford University) on the ‘gig economy’ and employment relations.

It is therefore imperative that if you want to attend the infamous BUIRA conference dinner you register for the conference before June 21st (or you will not be attending the dinner and that would be a real shame).

The main Conference Dinner venue is located in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.  Due to this venue also technically being a Naval base, names of all those attending the conference dinner will be required in advance for security reasons.

12th June 2017

job vacancies

There are posts for Assistant Dean for Research, Lecturer/ Senior lecturer in Human Resource management and professor/Reader in Human resource management.

On the Sheffield Business school Website on https://peopleportal.shu.ac.uk/pls/shlive18recruit/erq_search_version_4.search_form .

Vacancy-Assistant Dean, Research Sheffield Business School Academic Senior staff grade - £76,573 to £81,573 dependent on experience

Combining academic excellence with real-world relevance, Sheffield Business School (SBS) is growing in size, in our reputation and in our ambition - which is to be the leading applied business school in the UK. Energised by new senior leadership, a drive towards AACSB accreditation - building on our EPAS accreditations - and a new University strategy, this is a particularly exciting time to join us.

Research and knowledge creation are central to our strategy. With passion, a clear vision and strong academic leadership, you will develop and deliver an inclusive approach that:

• Further embeds research and scholarship as central aspects of being an SBS academic.
• Enhances our teaching delivery and the student experience.
• Significantly improves the business school's REF outputs in 2020/21.

As well as demonstrating strong collaborative leadership in research at a senior level, you will have excellent people skills and the ability to negotiate with and influence. These skills will be essential as you join our leadership team, making a vital contribution to the business school's wider strategic development.

VIDEO - PVC Dean, Professor Kevin Kerrigan, talks about the role and the type of person we are looking for.

Discover more about the business school, how we're transforming lives and our ambitions for the future.

For non-EU applicants, we may be able to offer a certificate of sponsorship for this job if required.

Follow sheffhallamjobs on Twitter for job alerts and information about what makes this a great place to work.

Contact Person :Professor Kevin KerriganContact Number :0114 225 3869Date Advertised :05-Jun-2017Closing Date :02-Jul-2017Employment Type :Permanent - Full TimeLocation :City CampusJob number :029582

12th June 2017

Conference schedule now available

The schedule for the 2017 Conference is now available ow.ly/kbbw30cvQZH

12th June 2017

Centre for People and Performance (Manchester Met University) Annual Summer Conference 2017 (includes expert guidance and advice on professional upgrading from CIPD)

CPP Summer Conference 2017

(hosted by Centre for People and Performance in the Faculty of Business and Law)

includes buffet lunch with expert guidance and advice on professional upgrading from CIPD

You will also have the opportunity to find out more about the research that CPP undertakes, and the services that our researchers can offer organisations and policy makers.

30th June 2017 (9am-4pm)

Business School G34

Keynote Speakers:

Ryan Cheyne - People Director at Rentalcars

Professor Richard Saundry – University of Plymouth - Innovation and Change in the Management of Workplace Conflict

Stephen Taylor – University of Exeter – Employment Law Update

Expert panel/Q and A sessions:

Brexit - responding to the HR challenges and opportunities

Social Media and Workplace Conflict: Problems or Solutions

Lynn Collins - Regional Secretary of TUC

Gemma Dale - Senior HR professional and author of 'Putting Social Media to Work'

David Jackson - Assistant Director of HR, Manchester Metropolitan University

Caroline Rayner - Employment Lawyer at Baines Wilson LLP

Gemma Wibberly - Institute for Research into Organizations, Work and Employment, University of Central Lancashire

The conference will bring together HR professionals and consultants, trade-unionists, researchers, students and other stakeholders to discuss the HR challenges and opportunities presented by the changing and sometimes uncertain times that organisations and workers face.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hr-in-turbulent-times-cpp-summer-conference-2017-tickets-34354595520

12th June 2017

BUIRA International & Comparative Employment Relations Study Group Seminar

BUIRA International & Comparative Employment Relations Study Group Seminar

Date:     Wednesday, 14^th June 2017

Time:    1.30pm to 4.00pm (lunch available from 1.30pm)

Venue:   Keele Management School Training Suite, Room DW 0.30, Darwin Building,

              Keele University, ST5 5BG

Speakers:

Dr Christina Niforou (University of Birmingham)
Any role for ‘space’ in global labour governance? The contribution of the maritime labour convention in raising the floor of rights’.
 
Dr Stephen Mustchin (University of Manchester)
Union agency, transnational regulation and the formal and informal uses of International and European Framework agreements in multinational companies in Britain.

For further details, or to indicate that you would like to attend, please contact Carola Weissmeyer (01782 733603) or email c.weissmeyer@keele.ac.uk

11th June 2017

Proposed letter to The Guardian re Manchester staffing cuts

Message from Sian Moore s.moore@greenwich.ac.uk 

Proposed letter to The Guardian - 
As academic staff across UK universities we are appalled at the proposed staffing cuts at the University of Manchester (the Guardian 13.05.17) including but not limited to the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, and Alliance Manchester Business School. The proposals meant that 171 members of staff are set to be axed despite annual income from tuition fees exceeding £423 million (2015/16). The way in which these cuts are being made and the treatment of these committed teachers and respected scholars is abhorrent.
Unfortunately these plans are resonant of a Higher Education system now rooted in the market and underpinned by rampant managerialism that has little interest in critical public and inclusive education and a general disregard for the views or experience of academic staff. At the same time as cutting 171 jobs, the University plan to create 100+ posts for early-career academics. In our experience these positions are unlikely to offer security in contractual terms or opportunities to pursue scholarship.
In the context of Manchester University’s plans and our own current experience in universities, the necessity for a government committed to an alternative model of higher, further and adult education which will abandon a system based upon crude market competition and league tables and abolish student fees and debts has never been more urgent.
Professor Sian Moore, University of Greenwich
Professor Andy Danford, University of Leicester
Professor Phil Taylor, University of Strathclyde

To sign contact Sian Moore. 

Also link to petition

https://www.change.org/p/dame-nancy-rothwell-scrap-staff-redundancies-at-university-of-manchester?recruiter=68707485&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-md-no_src-reason_msg

1st June 2017

Conference: HRM in Uncertain Times: Economic Crisis, Brexit and Beyond

The conference aims to discuss the impact of different forms of uncertainty (e.g. economic, political) on the management of human resources (HR), as well as identify innovative HR practices and policy responses during turbulent times. 

 Newcastle University London Campus

102 Middlesex St

London

E1 7EZ

7/8 June 2017

To view the conference programme: http://bit.ly/2shUg7p

To register for the conference: ow.ly/Ylfx30bPkTF (Deadline 1 June 2017).

For general enquiries please contact Oana Mihut at the BAM Office on +44(0)2073837770, or at omihut@bam.ac.uk.

For specific enquires please contact the organisers stewart.johnstone@ncl.ac.uk and alison.glaister@york.ac.uk

31st May 2017

job vacancy

Dear colleagues

As PI of the ERC project “Labour Politics and the EU’s New Economic Governance regime (NEG)” https://www.erc-europeanunions.eu/ I am inviting applications for the following 5-year-long temporary positions (job descriptions attached):  

2 x Postdoctoral Research Fellow Level 1 in Labour Politics and the EU’s New Economic Governance Regime, UCD School of Business & Geary Institute for Public Policy

(The candidates should hold a PhD in Industrial Relations, Political Sciences, Sociology, Social Anthropology, European studies, or cognate disciplines and have research experience in the fields of European labour politics, EU governance, transnationalism, trade unions or social movements.  

Salary: €34,975 - €38,063 per annum

Closing Date: 17:00hrs (Local Irish Time) 5th June 2017

Please apply online at  https://www.ucd.ie/hr/jobvacancies/ using the external applicants tab and the reference number field “009343”.

(Provisional interview date: Friday 16 June 2017. Starting date: 1 October 2017.)

1 x Senior Social Scientist in Labour Politics and EU Governance, UCD School of Business & Geary Institute for Public Policy (Temporary half time)

Salary: €50,000 - €80,000 per annum pro rata (€25,000 – €40,000 per annum half time)

Closing Date: 17:00hrs (Local Irish Time) 5th June 2017

Please apply online at  https://www.ucd.ie/hr/jobvacancies/ using the external applicants tab and the reference number “009331”.

(Provisional interview date: Friday 16 June 2017. Starting date: 1 October 2017.)

30th May 2017

ILERA2018: Employment for a Sustainable Society: What is to be Done?

ILERA2018: Employment for a Sustainable Society: What is to be Done?

The world of work has dramatically changed over the last three decades. Traditional employment relations have weakened, and in their wake job insecurity and income inequality have proliferated. Changes are not limited to industrialized countries. New forms of employment relations have emerged in developing economies and they may be of worldwide significance for the future. A succession of global financial crises and subsequent economic stagnation has revealed the structural problems contributing to unstable employment relations and polarized labor markets. Bottom-line short-termism likely only worsens these problems. Yet stable employment with equal opportunity is essential for sustainable socio-economic development and prosperity.

The 18th ILERA World Congress addresses the challenging question of how to redraw employment relations in order to achieve employment for a sustainable society.

You are invited to send your contributions on the following subjects (follow the links for detailed explanations):

Track 1: Collective Voices and Social Dialogue for a Better Future

Track 2: HRM Challenges and Responses for the Changing Workplace

Track 3: Labor Market Dualization and Institutional Responses

Track 4: Workforce Diversity, Labor Market Inequality and Social Integration

Track 5: Work and Employment Relations in Emerging Market Economies

Track 6: The Future of Work

Notice

• It is authors' responsibility to ensure that all issues pertaining to copyright are addressed prior to submission.
• Authors are not allowed to modify their abstract information after the submission deadline, August 31, 2017.
• Abstract acceptance will be notified by September 30, 2017 via submitter's email. The submitter will be informed all future notification of abstracts by e-mail.
• If the presenter of an accepted abstract does not register by May 31, 2018, the abstract will be automatically withdrawn.

Content and Format

• Abstracts should be submitted online in English.
• Abstract includes separate sections; Preferred Tracks(s), Title, Author(s), Body of Abstract
• Title: Max. 30 words.
• Author(s): In case of multiple authors, enter the names of all authors in the order you wish them to appear in the abstract.
  * Please make sure to indicate the presenter and corresponding author.
• Body of Abstract: Max. 500 words not containing any illustrations, images, graphs or tables.

* Please do not repeat author(s) information in the abstract text section.

www.ilera2018.org

30th May 2017

BUIRA Conference 2017- Register Now!

BUIRA Conference 2017- Register Now!

Registration is OPEN click here to register and here to view the outline conference programme.

British Universities Industrial Relations Association Annual Conference:

The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

University of Portsmouth, Wednesday 28th - Friday 30th June 2017

Guest speakers include:

Professor Charles Woolfson (Linköping University) and Hannah Reed (Trades Union Congress) on the implications of ‘Brexit’ for employment relations

Mags Dewhurst (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) and Alex Wood (Oxford University) on the ‘gig economy’ and employment relations

The Conference Dinner venue is located in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Further information about the conference, including an outline of the conference programme, is available on this page:

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

Registration for the conference is open until 9^th June only using the link on this page:

http://onlinestore.port.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/portsmouth-business-school/organisation-studies-and-hr/british-universities-industrial-relations-association-buira-annual-conference

17th May 2017

Invites to host BUIRA conference 2018

Invites to host BUIRA conference 2018

We have already had some interest in hosting the BUIRA conference in 2018.  If anyone else would be interested in hosting our 2018 conference please do let us know asap at admin@buira.org

17th May 2017

pre-conference doctoral session on Critical Friendship in Employment Relations

This year the British Universities Industrial Relations Association is organising a pre-conference doctoral session on Critical Friendship in Employment Relations, which will take place on the 28th June from 9.00-13.00 in Portsmouth.

The will be led by Professor Melanie Simms (University of Leicester), Editor in Chief ‘Work Employment and Society’. The session is an exercise in critical friendship where all participants circulate a piece of written work which is then discussed in a supportive and collaborative environment. The piece of written work does NOT have to be a full conference paper (submissions can be as short as the participant wishes). It can be a section of a chapter, a draft paper or any document to discuss with peers.

This is a unique opportunity to get to know fellow PhD students, exercise critical thinking and receive constructive feedback.

The deadline for submission of written work is FRIDAY 9th JUNE 2017. Submissions should be made via e-mail: buiraphd@outlook.com

17th May 2017

Symposium on left-of-centre-parties and unions, 01.06.17, QMUL

Symposium on left-of-centre-parties and unions, 01.06.17, QMUL

Just like Labour in the UK, left-of-centre parties all over the world have historic ties to the trade union movement – ties aimed at helping both partners but that sometimes spark disputes between them, as well as attracting criticism from their opponents.

Whether rooted in a shared history, culture and ideology or more a 'marriage of convenience', in the post-war period the relationship between socialist, social democratic, and labour parties and unions supposedly helped parties win power and ensured the working class achieved huge gains in terms of full employment, the welfare state and labour market regulation. More recently, however, it’s been argued that the links between left-of-centre parties and trade unions have declined as their collaboration has become less mutually advantageous, not least as a consequence of structural changes in the economy and labour market.

This symposium, featuring some of the researchers involved and an expert set of discussants, is dedicated to discussing a newly published cross-national study of the ties between left-of-centre parties and trade unions, edited by Elin Haugsgjerd Allern (University of Oslo) and Tim Bale (Queen Mary University of London), that qualifies, and even challenges that widespread assumption.

Based on a brand new dataset, including organizational data gathered by an international team of experts, that study uncovers and explores what turns out to be considerable variation in the strength of contemporary organizational links between left-of-centre parties and unions in twelve different countries that have been democracies since at least the mid -to late-1940's. Testing a series of hypotheses on the importance and the impact of particular political systems and socio-economic factors, and on the costs and benefits for both parties and unions, detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis suggests that left-of-centre party-trade union links are stronger where trade unions are larger, denser, and more unified and where parties are less able to rely on the state to finance their organizational activities and electoral campaigns. Traditional partners that still have fairly strong links with each other seem to have greater incentives than others to maintain those links. Moreover, it remains the case that the links between parties and unions matter to policy, too.

The symposium will see participants gather for lunch at 12.30, after which there will be two sessions – one on country case studies and one on comparative angles – which will run until 17.30.  

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-left-of-centre-parties-and-trade-unions-in-the-twenty-first-century-tickets-34323700111

17th May 2017

**The gig economy: deal or ordeal? - Monday 5th June, King's College London** Mon 5 June 2017 09:30 – 19:30 BST Organised by the Centre for Digital Culture, Department of Digital Humanities (King's College, London) in collaboration with ENDL - European

-

17th May 2017

Conference -last call

17th May 2017

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity

8th May 2017

BUIRA Conference 2017- Register Now!

BUIRA Conference 2017- Register Now!

British Universities Industrial Relations Association Annual Conference:

The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

University of Portsmouth, Wednesday 28th - Friday 30th June 2017

Guest speakers include:

Professor Charles Woolfson (Linköping University) and Hannah Reed (Trades Union Congress) on the implications of ‘Brexit’ for employment relations

Mags Dewhurst (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) and Alex Wood (Oxford University) on the ‘gig economy’ and employment relations

Further information about the conference is available on this page:

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

Register for the conference is open until 9^th June only using the link on this page:

http://onlinestore.port.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/portsmouth-business-school/organisation-studies-and-hr/british-universities-industrial-relations-association-buira-annual-conference

8th May 2017

BUIRA Vacancies

NOTICE TO ALL MEMBERS

The BUIRA Executive Committee will have 4 vacancies as from July 2017.

As discussed and agreed at the AGM in Leeds 2016, the voting system for vacancies on the Executive Committee will be conducted differently.

As from this year we now invite all members to forward their interest in becoming a member of the BUIRA Exec Committee to BUIRA admin through admin@buira.org

All members are welcome to apply regardless of career stage i.e. early, senior etc

Please include a short biography of no more than 300 words and your reasons for applying for the vacant position.

2nd May 2017

Global Governance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Global Governance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Global Labour Governance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Shirley Lerner Memorial Lecture

Thursday 18 May 6pm-7.30pm

Speaker: Professor Jimmy Donaghey

Professor of Industrial Relations and Personnel Management

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH (near Oxford Road railway station) http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

Free wine and nibbles buffet after the meeting 7.30pm

It is well established that globalisation has placed many pressures that have destabilised national systems of employment relations without establishing equivalent transnational mechanisms. While much of the focus to date has been on identifying these governance gaps, this presentation will argue that institutional innovations are emerging in response to this destabilisation.

Drawing on research into the response to the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, it will examine the Accord For Building and Fire Safety in Bangladesh, a transnational initiative bringing together Bangladeshi unions, two global Union federations, over 200 western brands and four NGOs to improve workplace safety in the ready-made garment supply chain. It will be highlighted that the Accord demonstrates that developing a meaningful mechanism of global labour governance in this case required both institutional experimentation and significant actor-led innovations. Finally, the extent to which wider lessons can be drawn from the case and what questions remain unanswered about the evolving nature of global labour governance will be considered.

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

1st May 2017

new book

New Book: Introducing Employment Relations: a Critical Introduction

Oxford University Press has just published the 4^th edition of Introducing Employment Relations: a Critical Introduction by Steve Williams.

Further information, including details of how to obtain an inspection copy, is available from the OUP website: http://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/introducing-employment-relations-9780198777120?cc=gb&lang=en&

1st May 2017

Conference on Lay Members in Employment Tribunals

1st May 2017

Oral Labour History Day 2017

Oral Labour History Day 2017

Getting Going with Oral Labour History

Britain at Work (B@W) 1945-95 in association with British Universities’ Industrial Relations (BUIRA) IR History Group and Oral History Society (OHS)

Saturday 3 June 2017 11am-4.45pm

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)

Room C279

For further details and to reserve a place, please email Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

Once again, the Britain at Work (B@W) group is organising an Oral Labour History Day. This year’s theme is about how to get going and continue with oral labour history, with examples from different projects and inspiring presentations from those engaged. The day will begin with an opening address by Alan Dein, broadcaster and oral historian, followed by round table introductions on projects in which symposium participants are involved. After lunch, there will be presentations concerning inspiring projects by the trade unions, BECTU and Unison, and by Glasgow University on the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike. The day will end with a Robert Wilkinson from the Walthamstow History Workshop who is an expert at obtaining funding and running projects. All those engaged in or with an interest in oral labour history, and particularly trade unionists, are welcome to participate.

B@W is an initiative to capture the memories of people at work between 1945 and 1995, some of which are to found at the TUC Library Collections held at London Metropolitan University (www.unionhistory.info/britainatwork)..

Programme:

10.30-11.00     Registration

11.00-11.15     Welcome and Introduction:

11.15-12.00     Keynote: Alan Dein, broadcaster and oral historian

12.00-13.00     Roundtable: Brief contributions from participants (if they wish), on who they are and their interest in oral labour history

13.00-14.00     Lunch:

14.00-15.00     Presentations

• Mike Dick (BECTU)
• Diarmaid Kelliher and Johnnie Crossan (Glasgow University: 1984/5 Miners’ Strike, Kent)

15.00-15.30     Discussion

15.30               Break

15.45-16.30     Robert Wilkinson (Walthamstow History Workshop) on Heritage Lottery Foundation – how to apply, followed by discussion and questions.

16.30-16.45     Closing observations (Joanna Bornat, Oral History Society)

1st May 2017

vacancy

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Global Human Resource Management at Newcastle University

For further details please see:

https://vacancies.ncl.ac.uk/

1st May 2017

Employment Rights post brexit

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES

EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS POST-BREXIT

WEDNESDAY 10 MAY 2017. 15.00 – 18.00

ROOM QA065, QUEEN ANNE COURT, UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH

This seminar considers the current state of employment rights in the UK and how this might change in the aftermath of withdrawal from the EU. We have three expert speakers including Professor Keith Ewing (Kings College London), Sarah Veale (ex-TUC, EHRC Commissioner and Visiting Fellow at the University of Greenwich) and Rachel Suff (Senior Policy Adviser, Employment Relations, CIPD). The seminar will include a presentation on brand new research by the CIPD on employer views of employment rights..

Professor Keith Ewing (Kings College London) will look at the implications of BREXIT for employment law generally.  How much of our employment law is EU sourced, and how do we protect the legacy of EU sourced rights?   What is the role of the European Court of Justice in the protection of employment rights, and what will be the implications of losing access to the Court?   What is the future direction of EU social policy and employment rights, and what will be the implications for the UK as a non member of the EU? Keith Ewing is Professor of Public Law at King's College London, and President of the Institute of Employment Rights.

Sarah Veale (University of Greenwich and EHRC) will consider in particular the potential impact upon discrimination legislation. The majority of legislation protecting people in the UK from discrimination on grounds of protected characteristics derives from the EU. The UK Government has said that the Great Repeal Bill will simply copy all EU legislation that affects the UK on to the domestic statute book. It will then examine all of it to see what it deems necessary to retain, or improve. Some on the right are arguing for a wholesale reduction in anti-discrimination law as part of this process. More progressive voices, such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, argue to retain and improve the stock. The incremental introduction of anti-discrimination legislation in the UK has resulted in significant and positive changes in workplace culture. Its removal, or diminution, will lead to a deterioration in employment relations. Sarah Veale was Head of Equality and Employment Rights at the TUC between 2003 and 2015, when she retired. Since then Sarah has been a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a member of the Regulatory Policy Committee, an Executive Committee member of the Institute for Employment Rights and Vice Chair of the Equality and Diversity Forum. Previously Sarah was a member of the ACAS Council and the Health and Safety Executive Board.

Rachel Suff (Public Policy Adviser, Employment Relations CIPD) will present new research on employers’ attitudes to employment rights. Brexit brings the whole question of the UK’s employment law framework to the fore. Do we have the right balance of regulation to both protect individuals at work and promote labour market flexibility for employers? New research, commissioned by the CIPD, explores employers’ attitudes to employment law, how employers translate the law into practice and its impact on the business. It asks whether there is a certain 'perception-reality gap', and whether or not employers' perceived barriers and attitudes to regulation are fully aligned to actual practice on the ground. The report also looks at key pieces of EU-derived employment regulation such as that relating to agency workers and working time to assess their effectiveness and future potential for reform. Rachel Suff joined the CIPD as a policy adviser in 2014, initially in a European role, to increase the CIPD’s public policy profile and engage with politicians, civil servants, policy-makers and commentators to champion better work and working lives. An important part of her role is to ensure that the views of the profession inform CIPD policy thinking on issues such as employment relations and health and well-being. As well as carrying out research on UK employment issues in collaboration with the CIPD's ER Network of employment relations specialists, she helps guide the CIPD’s thinking in relation to European developments affecting the world of work. Rachel’s prior roles include working as a researcher for XpertHR and as a senior policy adviser at Acas.

This is an open seminar and all are invited but please can you inform us if you are planning to attend from outside the University of Greenwich by contacting myself, Professor Geoff White, on wg08@gre.ac.uk.

HOW TO FIND US

Queen Anne Court is on the main University of Greenwich campus at the Old Royal Naval College. The nearest TfL station is Cutty sark on the DLR. The nearest mainline station is Maze Hill on the line from Cannon Street and London Bridge.

24th April 2017

Bargaining for productivity

24th April 2017

Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation,

Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship

Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases

Friday 28 April 2017, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)
Room: C279 (lunch C287)

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the implications for employment and the labour market of the rapid development of new forms of working associated with digitalisation. Jan Drahokoupil (ETUI) will present the work he has been undertaking on production networks and the future of work, in particular the business model of a platform economy. He argues that this represents an extension of market mechanisms that has serious implications for workers, requiring particular measures including special protection, a framework for self-employment and an extension of collective bargaining possibilities. This will be complemented by Annie Powell who will speak about the reasons for the decision in the Uber driver case and its implications for other claims, including Deliveroo.

Jan Drahokoupil is a Senior Researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels and coordinates research on digitalization. He has published a number of books and journal articles on European and transition economies, welfare state, and multinational corporations. He is also editor of two forthcoming special issues of Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research on digitalization and the future of work. His book publications include Transition economies: political economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (with Martin Myant), Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, The outsourcing challenge: organizing workers across fragmented production networks (edited), ETUI, 2015, and Flexible workforces and low profit margins: electronics assembly between Europe and China (edited), ETUI, 2016.

Annie Powell is a solicitor in the employment and discrimination team at law firm Leigh Day. She was recently involved in the successful Employment Tribunal claim by Uber drivers which found that Uber wrongly classifies the drivers as self-employed and is therefore acting unlawfully in denying them workers’ rights including the right to receive holiday pay and to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage.

This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke,  clarkel@wmin.ac.uk or

24th April 2017

job vacancy

Job vacancy: Assistant/ Associate Professor in Human Resource Management at Warwick Business School

Warwick Business School is currently inviting applications for the role of Assistant/ Associate Professor in Human Resource Management. We are looking for an internationally oriented, ambitious yet collegial scholar who will contribute to the existing research streams within the school’s Organisation and HRM group.

We especially welcome applications from researchers with the ability to publish at the very highest level, and who have the potential to generate research income and research impact.

Closing date for applications: May 14^th.

Further details can be found at:

Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management (78900-047)

Associate Professor in Human Resource Management (78931-047)

If you would like to discuss this vacancy further, please contact Kim Hoque, Head of the Organisation and Human Resource Management group: kim.hoque@wbs.ac.uk;  +44 (0)2476 524658

24th April 2017

"Launch of BSI Code of Practice for Diversity and Inclusion, 4th May, Manchester Museum"

"Launch of BSI Code of Practice for Diversity and Inclusion, 4th May, Manchester Museum"

Colleagues at FairWRC, Manchester have been working with BSI to develop a Code of Practice for Diversity and Inclusion (BS 76005: 2017). This is being launched on 4th May at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester and all are welcome. Details below:

http://shop.bsigroup.com/Navigate-by/Conferences/Conferences/Now-Booking/2017-05-04-BS-76005-launch-event-Diversity-and-inclusion/BS-76005-Launch-event/

The Code of Practice was developed by a BSI drafting panel consisting of academics and practitioners and attempts to push the consideration of diversity and inclusion beyond the organisation to customers/clients, supply chain partners and communities. Further information can be obtained from Anne McBride, a.mcbride@manchester.ac.uk

24th April 2017

Job vacancy

UCD College of Business UCD School of Business

Lecturer/ Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management and Employment Relations.

Temporary 5 year Post

Applications are invited for a temporary five year appointment as Lecturer/ Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management and Employee Relations, UCD School of Business.

The successful candidate will contribute to the following areas and have a track record of:

Research: The Human Resource Management and Employment Relations Subject Area places strong emphasis on research leading to publication in international, peer-reviewed academic journals and in leading debate in the field of human resource management in the academic and public space.

Teaching and Learning: The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to teaching and assessment on modules dealing with European Employment Relations and HRM and with Work and Employment in the Global Economy. They will also be expected to contribute to human resource management modules delivered by the Subject Group. The Subject Group is a significant contributor to the Business School’s undergraduate, postgraduate, international and executive education programmes.

Administration: assume administrative and managerial duties as appropriate to the role.

Lecturer/Assistant Prof. (above the bar) Salary Scale: €51,807 - €79,194 per annum

Appointment will be made on scale and in accordance with the Department of Finance guidelines

Closing date: 17.00hrs (Local Irish Time) on 2 May 2017.

Prior to application, further information (including application procedure) should be obtained from the UCD Job Vacancies website: http://www.ucd.ie/hr/jobvacancies.

Applications must be submitted by the closing date and time specified. Any applications which are still in progress at the closing time of 17:00hrs (Local Irish Time) on the specified closing date will be cancelled automatically by the system. UCD are unable to accept late applications.

Hours of work for academic staff are those as prescribed under Public Service Agreements. For further information please follow link below: http://www.ucd.ie/hr/t4cms/Academic%20Contract.pdf

13th April 2017

Job vacancy

3-year Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the University of Sydney

The University of Sydney Business School’s Women, Work and Leadership Research Group is advertising a 3 year, level A Post-doctoral fellowship working on a project on women’s careers in male-dominated occupations, professions and sectors.

Closing date: 3 May 2017 (11:30pm, Sydney time)

For further information, please use the above links or go to one of the following links:

Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Women, Work and Leadership Research Group

http://sydney.edu.au/recruitment/ and search using the reference number 624/0317.

We would be really glad if you could pass this on to your networks of suitable qualified people (must have PhD in relevant area etc.)

10th April 2017

Letter to The Guardian by 67 industrial relations academics

Letter to The Guardian by 67 industrial relations academics supporting the BA cabin crew dispute over pay, 13 Match 2017:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/13/to-fly-to-starve-ba-cabin-crew-deserve-better

6th April 2017

Professor Ralph Darlington’s blog for the Institute for Employment Rights

Professor Ralph Darlington’s blog for the Institute for Employment Rights on why industrial relations academics ‘take sides’ in industrial disputes like the one at British, 24 March 2017 Airways: http://www.ier.org.uk/blog/ba-cabin-crew-dispute-why-academics-‘take-sides’

6th April 2017

Job vacancy

Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Women, Work and Leadership Research Group

Closing date: 3 May 2017 (11:30pm, Sydney time)

For further information, please use the above links or go to: http://sydney.edu.au/recruitment/ and search using the reference number 624/0317.

The post doc will be working directly with Marian Baird and me in the WWLRG at the University of Sydney Business School.

We would be really glad if you could pass this on to your academic networks.

6th April 2017

Registration to the British Universities Industrial Relations Association Annual Conference:

Registration to the British Universities Industrial Relations Association Annual Conference:

The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

University of Portsmouth, Wednesday 28th - Friday 30th June 2017

Please note that conference registration is open. You will be able to register for the conference only until 9^th June using the link on this page:

http://onlinestore.port.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/portsmouth-business-school/organisation-studies-and-hr/british-universities-industrial-relations-association-buira-annual-conference

6th April 2017

Global Labour Governance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Shirley Lerner Memorial Meeting

Global Labour Governance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Speaker: Professor Jimmy Donaghey

Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 18 May 6pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

It is well established that globalisation has placed many pressures that have destabilised national systems of employment relations without establishing equivalent transnational mechanisms. While much of the focus to date has been on identifying these governance gaps, this presentation will argue that institutional innovations are emerging in response to this destabilisation.

Drawing on research into the response to the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, it will examine the Accord For Building and Fire Safety in Bangladesh, a transnational initiative bringing together Bangladeshi unions, two global Union federations, over 200 western brands and four NGOs to improve workplace safety in the readymade garment supply chain. It will be highlighted that the Accord demonstrates that developing a meaningful mechanism of global labour governance in this case required both institutional experimentation and significant actor-led innovations. Finally, the extent to which wider lessons can be drawn from the case and what questions remain unanswered about the evolving nature of global labour governance will be considered.

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

29th March 2017

Fully Funded Case PhD: Alliance Manchester Business School: ‘The causes and consequences of precarious work for women’

Fully Funded PhD: ‘The causes and consequences of precarious work for women’

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship with the Fairness at Work Research Centre at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, under the supervision of Professors Damian Grimshaw and Jill Rubery.  This ‘studentship is partnership with Oxfam.

See also: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AXY439/esrc-case-phd-studentship-the-causes-and-consequences-of-precarious-work-for-women-a-city-region-study-of-greater-manchester/

27th March 2017

CERIC doctoral conference- 10th May

2017 Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change (CERIC) Doctoral Conference

‘The Employment Relationship’

The Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC) warmly invites postgraduate researchers at all stages to the 2017 CERIC Doctoral Conference, to be held on Wednesday 10th May 2017 at Leeds University Business School.

The theme for the Conference is ‘The Employment Relationship’. Abstracts for oral and poster presentations are invited from a broad spectrum of disciplines covering any aspect of:

v Work

v Employability

v Labour Markets

v Industrial relations / trade union movements

v Human resource management

v Inequalities

v Diversity

The deadline for abstract submission of up to 300 words is Friday 31st March 2017 (notification of acceptance will be sent by Monday 10th April).

The abstract submission can be made via e-mail: cericphd@leeds.ac.uk and registration for the conference can be made via the following link:

http://business.leeds.ac.uk/about-us/article/2016-centre-for-employment-relations-and-change-ceric-doctoral-conference/

CERIC is pleased to offer a prize for the best presentation, which will be the costs (up to £400) to cover attendance at a leading conference of the student’s choice. There is also a prize of £100 for the best poster presentation.

For any queries please contact the organisers at cericphd@leeds.ac.uk

To find out more about CERIC, please visit

http://lubswww2.leeds.ac.uk/CERIC/

http://business.leeds.ac.uk/about-us/article/2017-centre-for-employment-relations-innovation-and-change-ceric-doctoral-conference/

27th March 2017

2017 Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change (CERIC) Doctoral Conference

2017 Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and

Change (CERIC) Doctoral Conference

‘The Employment Relationship’

The Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC) warmly invites postgraduate researchers at all stages to the 2017 CERIC Doctoral

Conference, to be held on Wednesday 10^th May 2017 at Leeds University Business

School.

The theme for the Conference is ‘The Employment Relationship’. Abstracts for oral and poster presentations are invited from a broad spectrum of disciplines covering any aspect of:

• Work
• Employability
• Labour Markets
• Industrial relations / trade union movements
• Human resource management
• Inequalities
• Diversity

The deadline for abstract submission of up to 300 words is Friday 31^st March 2017

(Notification of acceptance will be sent by Monday 10^th April).

The abstract submission can be made via e-mail:

cericphd@leeds.ac.uk and registration for the conference can be made via the following link:

http://business.leeds.ac.uk/about-us/article/2016-centre-for-employment-relations-and-change-ceric-doctoral-conference/

CERIC is pleased to offer a prize for the best presentation, which will be the costs (up to £400) to cover attendance at a leading conference of the student’s choice.

There is also a prize of £100 for the best poster presentation

.

For any queries please contact the organisers at cericphd@leeds.ac.uk

To find out more about CERIC, please visit http://lubswww2.leeds.ac.uk/CERIC/

20th March 2017

Central London BUIRA Seminar: Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe

Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI

Friday 31 March 2017, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube) Room C279 (lunch C287)

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the marked differences with the rest of Europe still evident in the fields of labour, work and industrial relations in Eastern Europe, over a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall and more than ten years after the accession of Central and Eastern Europe into the European Union. Drawing on their recent book, to be launched in the seminar, Labour and Social Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2017), Violaine Delteil and Vassil Kirov will present a detailed analysis of the original and “big transformation” that has taken place in a wide range of countries in in the region. They stress the singularity of national models in the light of the diversity of capitalisms and explore the various dimensions of the “dependant capitalism model” that most countries from the region illuminate. They will address the key issues of the Europeanization of the new member states and the cumulative trends of labour weakening and labour awakening that emerged in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 crisis.

Dr Violaine Delteil is Associate Professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and member of the Research Centre "Integration and Cooperation in the European Area" (ICEE). Her research interests include: the social dimension and employment issues of the European Union, European integration and regional cohesion, and the challenges and economics of globalization. In addition to the new book, her recent publications include: Trajectoires de transformation et d’intégration dans l’Europe du Sud-Est. Défis pour les élargissements futurs,V. Delteil, R. Ivan (eds), Editions de l'Université de Bucarest, 2016; Strategies of Multinational Corporations and Social Regulations: European and Asian Perspectives, eds V. Delteil, P. Dieuaide, X. Richet, Springer, 2014.

Dr Vassil Kirov is Associate Professor in the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Senior Researcher at the Centre Pierre Naville, Université d'Evry, and at the European Trade Union Institute. His research interests are in the sociology of enterprise, work and organisations, employment relations, labour markets and Europeanisation. Vassil has been a researcher in large EU-funded research projects (SMALL, WORKS, WALQING) and has worked as an external expert for the European Commission, the ILO, the European Foundation for Working and Living Conditions, CEDEFOP, the Fundamental Rights Agency, the Swiss Development Agency, etc. As well as the new book, his recent publications include: Holtgrewe, U., Kirov, V., Ramioul, M. (eds.) (2015), “Hard Work in New Jobs. The Quality of Work and Life in European Growth Sectors”, Houndmills, Palgrave McMillan.

This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke, clarkel@wmin.ac.uk or 020350 66528

17th March 2017

Central London BUIRA Seminar: Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation

Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation,

Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship

Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases

Friday 28 April 2017, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube) Room: C279 (lunch C287)

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the implications for employment and the labour market of the rapid development of new forms of working associated with digitalisation. Jan Drahokoupil (ETUI) will present the work he has been undertaking on production networks and the future of work, in particular the business model of a platform economy. He argues that this represents an extension of market mechanisms that has serious implications for workers, requiring particular measures including special protection, a framework for self-employment and an extension of collective bargaining possibilities. This will be complemented by Annie Powell who will speak about the reasons for the decision in the Uber driver case and its implications for other claims, including Deliveroo.

Jan Drahokoupil is a Senior Researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels and coordinates research on digitalization. He has published a number of books and journal articles on European and transition economies, welfare state, and multinational corporations. He is also editor of two forthcoming special issues of Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research on digitalization and the future of work. His book publications include Transition economies: political economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (with Martin Myant), Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, The outsourcing challenge: organizing workers across fragmented production networks (edited), ETUI, 2015, and Flexible workforces and low profit margins: electronics assembly between Europe and China (edited), ETUI, 2016.

Annie Powell is a solicitor in the employment and discrimination team at law firm Leigh Day. She was recently involved in the successful Employment Tribunal claim by Uber drivers which found that Uber wrongly classifies the drivers as self-employed and is therefore acting unlawfully in denying them workers’ rights including the right to receive holiday pay and to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage.

This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke, clarkel@wmin.ac.uk or 020350 66528

17th March 2017

BRITISH UNIVERSITIES INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ASSOCIATION

BRITISH UNIVERSITIES INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ASSOCIATION

Central London BUIRA in conjunction with

THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER

The Central London branch of BUIRA meets in the Westminster Business School of the University of Westminster at 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (nearest tube Baker Street). There are many with an interest in industrial relations in the London area, including from universities, trade unions and employer associations. The meetings take the form of seminars, with key speakers, and attract a lively mix of people, both BUIRA and non-BUIRA members, from a range of different disciplines and organisations, some very expert in the particular topic discussed. We usually meet on the last Friday of the month at 10.30, with coffee available from 10.15 and a sandwich lunch provided from 12.30. This gives ample opportunity to discuss the presentation from an invited speaker and matters of common interest, as well as to just catch up with friends. The programme aims to give us fresh insights into key current issues, to present new approaches to the subject of industrial relations, and to discuss important research in the area - whether in Britain or farther afield, particularly on mainland Europe. The programme for 2017 is intended to is intended to keep us aware that employment and labour relations continue developing at a transnational and ultimately global level.

27^th January 2017, Union membership and industrial action in Germany and Britain,

Dr Heiner Dribbusch (Institute of Economic and Social Research, WSI, Germany) on Organising through conflict and Professor John Kelly (Birkbeck College) on Do strikes increase trade union membership? Room C419 (lunch C389)

24^th February 2017, Labour and global governance, Frank Hoffer (Bureau for Workers’ Activities, ILO) and Dr Yvonne Rueckert (University of Portsmouth) on Global unions and World Bank and IMF policies,

Discussant: Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck College London)

Room: C279 (lunch C287)

31^st March 2017 Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI, Room C279 (lunch C287)

28^th April 2017, Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation, with Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship and Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases Room: C279 (lunch C287)

26^th May 2017 tbc Room C279

So do put these dates in your diary now. These meetings can be full. To ensure a place and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Prof. Linda Clarke, Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS. Tel. 020350 66528; email: clarkel@wmin.ac.uk (please also let me know if you subsequently need to cancel)

17th March 2017

BUIRA Academic Debate: ‘Workplace partnership: A genuine high-road strategy or a chimera in disguise?’

BUIRA Academic Debate: ‘Workplace partnership: A genuine high-road strategy or a chimera in disguise?’

Peter Ackers - Professor of Employment Relations, De Montfort University

Mark Stuart – Montague Burton Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds

Recorded 10 November 2016 at BUIRA Doctoral Symposium, Leeds.

A video of the discussion now available online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS3RsyJKcb0

16th March 2017

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES

THE FUTURE OF THE LABOUR MARKET POST-BREXIT

WEDNESDAY 29 MARCH 2017. 15.00 – 18.00

ROOM HH102, HAMILTON HOUSE, UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH

This seminar considers the state of the UK labour market, looking at both the current picture and potential trends towards 2025 in the light of Brexit. In particular the seminar will look critically at the growth of precarious employment and the so-called ‘gig’ economy and whether this pattern is temporary or set to remain a key feature of post-Brexit Britain. We have three distinguished speakers to consider these issues – David Freeman (Head of Labour Market and Households at the ONS); Alex Bryson (University College London) and Kevin Doogan (University of Bristol). 

David Freeman (ONS) will describe and analyse recent trends in the UK Labour Market. Using a wide range of data on the UK Labour Market, David will look at trends shown by the data, particularly during the period following the recent economic downturn. Areas to be covered include types of employment, earnings, age and gender breakdowns. David Freeman is the Head of Labour Market and Households at the Office for National Statistics (ONS). He has worked at ONS since 1998, covering a number of roles in economic statistics.

Alex Bryson (University College London and NIESR) will discuss some of the important trends in work and the labour market over the last 20 or so years and address the question: can we approximate what the labour market looks like in 2025 by extrapolating from those trends? He will examine the contention - proffered by a few - that the traditional employment relationship underpinning the purchase of labour power in the modern era – the late 19th Century onwards – is coming under increasing strain and is under threat from the ‘gig’ economy. Alex Bryson is Professor of Quantitative Social Science at the Department of Social Science at UCL (https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/ browse/profile?upi=ABRYS65), and a Research Fellow at NIESR and IZA. His research focuses on industrial relations, labour economics and programme evaluation.

Kevin Doogan (University of Bristol) will briefly reflect on the art and the chequered history of labour market prediction. He will then discuss ‘the new temporalities’ in the organisation of working time, which Jill Rubery and colleagues have highlighted. He will consider the significance of ‘new employer-led modalities’, particularly in the rise of ‘Zero Hours Contracts’. He will argue that there is temporal divergence in labour market patterns with one trend suggesting impermanence and irregularity in employment and another which suggests increasing job stability and rising job tenures. Furthermore he will suggest that these trends are co-divergent and that future prospects will be influenced by the relative strengths of trends towards irregularity and stability. Kevin Doogan is the author of ‘New Capitalism? The Transformation of Work’. He is the Jean Monnet Professor of European Policy Studies at the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney and at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. 

This is an open seminar and all are invited but please can you inform us if you are planning to attend from outside the University of Greenwich by contacting myself, Professor Geoff White, on wg08@gre.ac.uk.

HOW TO FIND US

Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, Greenwich, London SE10 9LZ

Telephone: +44 20 8331 9083 E-mail: i3centre@gre.ac.uk.

Hamilton House is located on Park Vista, a ten minute walk from the main Old Royal Naval College campus. The nearest railway station is Maze Hill on the mainline from Cannon Street via London Bridge (about five minutes to Hamilton House). The alternative is Cutty Sark on the DLR from Bank station (about a fifteen minute walk to Hamilton House).

14th March 2017

BUIRA IR History seminar on American Labour Migration and Organisation

BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group

Labour in Late 19th century America: Migration and Organization

Wednesday, 22 March 2017, 4.30– 7.00

(Tea/coffee from 4.15pm, drinks/nibbles from 6.30pm)

Room C181, University of Westminster Business School, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)

For further details or to reserve a place,

please email Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

Programme:

4.30-5.00pm: Tea/coffee/refreshments

5.00pm: Welcome: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)

5.00-5.30pm: Kim Moody (Independent scholar resident in London)  

Tramps & Trade Union Travellers: How Geographic Mobility Undermined Organized Labour in Gilded Age America

The decades following the American Civil War saw massive internal migration across the continent, from farm to city, and city to city on a far greater scale than in Europe. Employment was often irregular and both skilled and unskilled workers tramped and travelled to find work. Along with recurring economic turbulence and the movement of industry itself, this migration undermined labour organization for much of period from 1870 to 1900.

5.30-6.00pm: Steven Parfitt (Associate Lecturer at the University of Derby)

The Knights of Labor and the Fraternal Tradition

The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens, was the first significant national labour organization in the USA. This presentation addresses its history and situates it within the framework of fraternalism and fraternal movements. Fraternalism has usually been overlooked in most accounts of labour history and working-class movements, and where it is mentioned it is usually done so in a derisive way. This paper aims to recover, or start to recover, this tradition and to think about what fraternalism might mean for us now.

6.00-6.30pm: General discussion/ close

6.30-7.00pm: Drinks

The speakers:

Kim Moody was a labour journalist in the US with the publication Labor Notes for many years, and author of five books and many articles on trade unionism and politics. His latest is In Solidarity: Essay in Working Class Organization in the United States, Haymarket Books, 2014. He has a PhD. in American Studies from the University of Nottingham.

Steven Parfitt is a historian of British, American and global labour history. His first book, Knights Across the Atlantic, has been published with Liverpool University Press. He has written ten articles in academic journals and others in the Guardian, Jacobin and TheConversation.com. He teaches a wide range of historical subjects at Derby, Loughborough and Nottingham on casual contracts and is looking for that elusive first post.

13th March 2017

Hans Boeckler Doctoral Fellowship

 Hans Boeckler Doctoral Fellowship

The Hans Boeckler Foundation (HBS) is pleased to announce the Hans Boeckler Doctoral Fellowship for 2017-2018. In May a committee will award one fellowship. The deadline for applications is April 15, 2017.

PURPOSE

These residential fellowships will be awarded to graduate students engaged in dissertation projects related to the Foundations research and policy consulting program and to the on-going work of its researchers. During their tenure fellows are expected to be in residence in Duesseldorf and to participate actively in the intellectual life of the Foundation.

The Hans-Boeckler-Foundation of the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) promotes codetermination as a principle for designing a democratic society. The HBS provides consulting services and training for elected representatives of works councils, staff councils and supervisory board representatives but also provides funding for some 2,000 university students. An important aspect of the Foundation’s work is related to academic research in various fields of study. Besides providing funding for external research, the HBS also maintains two own research institutes, the Institute for Economic and Social Research (WSI) and the Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK). Research projects cover a broad range of issues and fields of study. Among other aspects, research topics include welfare state development, co-determination, macroeconomics and European economic coordination, fiscal policy, monetary policy, forecasting, working time policy, collective bargaining, work organization, labor market regulation, gender studies, and the distribution of wealth and income. For summaries of the research profiles of both institutes see

http://www.boeckler.de/wsi_36380.htm

http://www.boeckler.de/imk_36269.htm

Working languages at the HBS are German and English.

ELIGIBILITY AND TERMS OF THE FELLOWSHIP

Doctoral Candidates are eligible to apply if they have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. but the dissertation. The fellowship is only available for students enrolled in a Ph.D. program outside of Germany.

Fellows may spend between three and twelve months in residence at the HBS for field research or theoretical work. Grants will normally begin by July 2017; however, individual arrangements are possible. The fellowship provides a stipend of 1150 Euro per month. In addition, the HBS will pay one economy class round trip from your location to Duesseldorf. Within limits of its possibilities the Foundation will also contribute to the costs for travel for field research within Germany.

Applicants should send a cover letter with name, address, e-mail and telephone number, their current CV, a research proposal not exceeding ten double spaced pages, and two letters of recommendation from academic advisors. Applicants should indicate how much time they would want to spend at the HBS and when they would like to start their tenure. Applications should be addressed to:

Hans Boeckler Foundation

c/o Dorothee Schmitz

Hans Boeckler Strasse 39

D-40476 Duesseldorf

Germany

10th March 2017

Job Opportunity: Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor - Human Resource Management/Employment Relations

Monash Business School Department of Management

Location: Melbourne

Employment Type: Full-time

Duration: Continuing appointment

The Opportunity

If you have the relevant qualifications and research track record, a demonstrated ability to engage and educate, high-level interpersonal skills, and if you enjoy working as part of a team, we would love to hear from you.

This role is a full-time position; however, flexible working arrangements may be negotiated.

Your application must address the selection criteria. For more info see: http://careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/559118/senior-lecturerassociate-professor-human-resource-managementemployment-relations

Enquiries: Head of Department, Véronique Ambrosini <v.ambrosini@monash.edu>

Closing Date: Thursday 16 March 2017, 11.55pm Melbourne time

9th March 2017

Vacancies at the University of Sheffield

7th March 2017

Publication of 'Bob Crow - socialist, leader, fighter' by Gregor Gall

Publication of 'Bob Crow - socialist, leader, fighter' by Gregor Gall

The 11 March is the third anniversary of the death of Bob Crow, former general secretary of the RMT union. He was just 52 years old.

Manchester University Press publishes 'Bob Crow - socialist, leader, fighter', which examines his life and legacy, both industrial and political, around the troika of his personality, politics and power of his members.

From the book description: 'Bob Crow was the most high-profile and militant union leader of his generation. This biography focuses on his leadership of the RMT union, examining and exposing a number of popular myths created about him by political opponents. Using the schema of his personal characteristics (including his public persona), his politics and the power of his members, it explains how and why he was able to punch above his weight in industrial relations and on the political stage, helping the small RMT union become as influential as many of its much larger counterparts.  As RMT leader, Crow oversaw a rise in membership and promoted a more assertive and successful bargaining approach. While he failed to unite all socialists into one new party, he established himself as the leading popular critic of neo-liberalism, 'New' Labour and the age of austerity.'

The book is priced £20 and can be bought from http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526100290/

The ISBN is 978-1-5261-0029-0

7th March 2017

Central London BUIRA Seminar - Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation

Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation,

Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship

Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases

Friday 28 April 2017, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube) Room: C279 (lunch C287) 

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk) 

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the implications for employment and the labour market of the rapid development of new forms of working associated with digitalisation. Jan Drahokoupil (ETUI) will present the work he has been undertaking on production networks and the future of work, in particular the business model of a platform economy. He argues that this represents an extension of market mechanisms that has serious implications for workers, requiring particular measures including special protection, a framework for self-employment and an extension of collective bargaining possibilities. This will be complemented by Annie Powell who will speak about the reasons for the decision in the Uber driver case and its implications for other claims, including Deliveroo. 

Jan Drahokoupil is a Senior Researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels and coordinates research on digitalization. He has published a number of books and journal articles on European and transition economies, welfare state, and multinational corporations. He is also editor of two forthcoming special issues of Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research on digitalization and the future of work. His book publications include Transition economies: political economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (with Martin Myant), Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, The outsourcing challenge: organizing workers across fragmented production networks (edited), ETUI, 2015, and Flexible workforces and low profit margins: electronics assembly between Europe and China (edited), ETUI, 2016.

Annie Powell is a solicitor in the employment and discrimination team at law firm Leigh Day. She was recently involved in the successful Employment Tribunal claim by Uber drivers which found that Uber wrongly classifies the drivers as self-employed and is therefore acting unlawfully in denying them workers’ rights including the right to receive holiday pay and to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage.

This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke, clarkel@wmin.ac.uk or 020350 66528

1st March 2017

British universities industrial relations association - Central london buira in conjunction with The University of Westminster

British universities industrial relations association

Central London Buira in conjunction with

The University Of Westminster

The Central London branch of BUIRA meets in the Westminster Business School of the University of Westminster at 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (nearest tube Baker Street). There are many with an interest in industrial relations in the London area, including from universities, trade unions and employer associations. The meetings take the form of seminars, with key speakers, and attract a lively mix of people, both BUIRA and non-BUIRA members, from a range of different disciplines and organisations, some very expert in the particular topic discussed. We usually meet on the last Friday of the month at 10.30, with coffee available from 10.15 and a sandwich lunch provided from 12.30. This gives ample opportunity to discuss the presentation from an invited speaker and matters of common interest, as well as to just catch up with friends. The programme aims to give us fresh insights into key current issues, to present new approaches to the subject of industrial relations, and to discuss important research in the area - whether in Britain or farther afield, particularly on mainland Europe. The programme for 2017 is intended to is intended to keep us aware that employment and labour relations continue developing at a transnational and ultimately global level.

27th January 2017, Union membership and industrial action in Germany and Britain,

Dr Heiner Dribbusch (Institute of Economic and Social Research, WSI, Germany) on Organising through conflict and Professor John Kelly (Birkbeck College) on Do strikes increase trade union membership? Room C419 (lunch C389)

24th February 2017, Labour and global governance, Frank Hoffer (Bureau for Workers’ Activities, ILO) and Dr Yvonne Rueckert (University of Portsmouth) on Global unions and World Bank and IMF policies,

Discussant: Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck College London)

Room: C279 (lunch C287)

31st March 2017 Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI, Room C279 (lunch C287)

28th April 2017, Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation, with Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship and Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases Room: C279 (lunch C287)

26th May 2017 tbc Room C279

So do put these dates in your diary now. These meetings can be full. To ensure a place and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Prof. Linda Clarke, Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS. Tel. 020350 66528; email: clarkel@wmin.ac.uk (please also let me know if you subsequently need to cancel)

1st March 2017

BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group

BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group

Labour in Late 19th century America: Migration and Organization

Wednesday, 22 March 2017, 4.30– 7.00

(Tea/coffee from 4.15pm, drinks/nibbles from 6.30pm)

Room C181, University of Westminster Business School, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)

For further details or to reserve a place,

please email Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

Programme:

4.30-5.00pm: Tea/coffee/refreshments

5.00pm: Welcome: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)

5.00-5.30pm: Kim Moody (Independent scholar resident in London)  

Tramps & Trade Union Travellers: How Geographic Mobility Undermined Organized Labour in Gilded Age America

The decades following the American Civil War saw massive internal migration across the continent, from farm to city, and city to city on a far greater scale than in Europe. Employment was often irregular and both skilled and unskilled workers tramped and travelled to find work. Along with recurring economic turbulence and the movement of industry itself, this migration undermined labour organization for much of period from 1870 to 1900.

5.30-6.00pm: Steven Parfitt (Associate Lecturer at the University of Derby)

The Knights of Labor and the Fraternal Tradition

The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens, was the first significant national labour organization in the USA. This presentation addresses its history and situates it within the framework of fraternalism and fraternal movements. Fraternalism has usually been overlooked in most accounts of labour history and working-class movements, and where it is mentioned it is usually done so in a derisive way. This paper aims to recover, or start to recover, this tradition and to think about what fraternalism might mean for us now.

6.00-6.30pm: General discussion/ close

6.30-7.00pm: Drinks

The speakers:

Kim Moody was a labour journalist in the US with the publication Labor Notes for many years, and author of five books and many articles on trade unionism and politics. His latest is In Solidarity: Essay in Working Class Organization in the United States, Haymarket Books, 2014. He has a PhD. in American Studies from the University of Nottingham.

Steven Parfitt is a historian of British, American and global labour history. His first book, Knights Across the Atlantic, has been published with Liverpool University Press. He has written ten articles in academic journals and others in the Guardian, Jacobin and TheConversation.com. He teaches a wide range of historical subjects at Derby, Loughborough and Nottingham on casual contracts and is looking for that elusive first post.

1st March 2017

Warwick-Acas Lowry Lecture: Monday 3rd April, 5.00pm, University of Warwick

Warwick-Acas Lowry Lecture: Monday 3rd April, 5.00pm, University of Warwick

The 2017 Lowry lecture, organised by the Industrial Relations Research Unit together with Acas, in memory of Sir Pat Lowry will be given by Margaret Beels, Chair, Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. The topic of the lecture will be ‘Tackling Labour Exploitation’.

If you would like to join the invited audience of senior employment relations practitioners, policymakers and academics for the lecture, which will be held at the University of Warwick, at 5pm on Monday 3rd April, could you please email Val.Jephcott@wbs.ac.uk by Friday 17th March.

Details of the location for the lecture and directions to the University of Warwick will be provided prior to the event.

28th February 2017

London BUIRA Seminar Friday 31 March Delteil and Kirov Transforming Labour in Eastern Europe

Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI

Friday 31 March 2017, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)
Room C279 (lunch C287)

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the marked differences with the rest of Europe still evident in the fields of labour, work and industrial relations in Eastern Europe, over a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall and more than ten years after the accession of Central and Eastern Europe into the European Union. Drawing on their recent book, to be launched in the seminar, Labour and Social Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2017), Violaine Delteil and Vassil Kirov will present a detailed analysis of the original and “big transformation” that has taken place in a wide range of countries in in the region. They stress the singularity of national models in the light of the diversity of capitalisms and explore the various dimensions of the “dependant capitalism model” that most countries from the region illuminate. They will address the key issues of the Europeanization of the new member states and the cumulative trends of labour weakening and labour awakening that emerged in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 crisis.

Dr Violaine Delteil is Associate Professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and member of the Research Centre "Integration and Cooperation in the European Area" (ICEE). Her research interests include: the social dimension and employment issues of the European Union, European integration and regional cohesion, and the challenges and economics of globalization. In addition to the new book, her recent publications include: Trajectoires de transformation et d’intégration dans l’Europe du Sud-Est. Défis pour les élargissements futurs,V. Delteil, R. Ivan (eds), Editions de l'Université de Bucarest, 2016; Strategies of Multinational Corporations and Social Regulations: European and Asian Perspectives, eds V. Delteil, P. Dieuaide, X. Richet, Springer, 2014.

Dr Vassil Kirov is Associate Professor in the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Senior Researcher at the Centre Pierre Naville, Université d'Evry, and at the European Trade Union Institute. His research interests are in the sociology of enterprise, work and organisations, employment relations, labour markets and Europeanisation. Vassil has been a researcher in large EU-funded research projects (SMALL, WORKS, WALQING) and has worked as an external expert for the European Commission, the ILO, the European Foundation for Working and Living Conditions, CEDEFOP, the Fundamental Rights Agency, the Swiss Development Agency, etc. As well as the new book, his recent publications include: Holtgrewe, U., Kirov, V., Ramioul, M. (eds.) (2015), “Hard Work in New Jobs. The Quality of Work and Life in European Growth Sectors”, Houndmills, Palgrave McMillan.

This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke,  clarkel@wmin.ac.uk or 020350 66528

28th February 2017

Vale Emeritus Prof. Zander Wedderburn/funeral details

On 23 February 2017 Zander Wedderburn passed away at the age of 81, just over a year after his dearly beloved Bridget (B), his wife, died. He was Emeritus Professor of Psychology in the School of Management, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, which he had served for 32 years, including as a Head of School and as a Member of the University Senate.

Before joining ‘The Watt’, he had worked on a rotating shift system at what later became the British Steel Corporation (BSC), Corby and then at Cardiff University on an industrial relations research project. After his retirement from The Watt, Alexander Wedderburn founded publishing company Fledgling Press.

His main research impact was on hours of work and shiftwork, on which he became an internationally known authority, building on a BSC Research Fellowship. His particular interest was in the interface between research and practice. His many credits include: several measured practical interventions, a ten-year stint as editor of the Bulletin of European Shiftwork Topics, and being founding editor of the Shiftwork International Newsletter. He was a Fellow of the Working Time Society, a member of BUIRA and President of the British Psychological Society in 2003/2004, only the third occupational psychologist to achieve the BPS presidency in the past fifty years: http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-20/edition-10/online-only-article-zander-wedderburns-presidential-address

Most of his teaching was in the area of making industrial, occupational and organisational psychology available to students of business and engineering, and he established a part-time M.Sc. in Occupational Psychology taught jointly with Strathclyde University.

He had an MA from Oxford (Exeter College) and a Ph.D. from Heriot-Watt. He published important contributions from 1960 (the year after he graduated) until after he retired in 2000. His book that was a ‘love letter’, an ‘obituary’ for his wife, ‘B: A Life of Love’ (2013), is a lovely memoir: http://www.fledglingpress.co.uk http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/memories-are-made-of-this-1-2370671

In spite of universities’ increasing demands that academics focus primarily on publishing research articles in elite academic journals, he always had time for universities’ broader roles including education, mentoring, wider engagement and service. He was a conscientious citizen, very generous with his time in terms of helping students, alumni, colleagues, practitioners and other people. He contributed his talent and time to furthering University governance, community, social and political causes, including industrial relations and other interests; see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Allan_Innes_Wedderburn

He was a great man and an excellent mentor; all those who were lucky enough to know him will miss him and always remember him fondly. Over the years, I have much enjoyed sharing good times with him and B in the UK and in Australia. I was fortunate to catch up with Zander at his home a few months ago. Although he was then ailing, he was still excellent company, as ever.

The gist of a recent message from his 4 lovely children is below:

There will be a public memorial service at St Andrew's and St George's West Church, George Street, Edinburgh, on Wednesday, March 1, at 1 pm. There will be light refreshments in the Undercroft at the church afterwards, and then there will be an open house at 7 Lennox Street, Edinburgh for anyone who feels like calling in to chat and share memories of Zander and B.

http://johnstonpress.iannounce.mobi/edinburgh-evening-news-and-scotsman-publications/obituary/professor-alexander-allan-innes-wedderburn/49293410

Zander had had cancer for over two years and in recent weeks, he'd been fading. On 23 February, as he sat listening to his favourite music with Chris and Joanna, without any distress or pain, his breathing unexpectedly suddenly changed, faltered, and then simply stopped completely. Only minutes before, he had been communicating with them, letting them know with a thumbs up that he was enjoying listening to the Woody Guthrie songs that they were listening to together. He did not struggle or suffer at all; he simply passed away peacefully.

It was a good end to a good life. He was a remarkable man: professionally he was an expert in the intriguing world of the psychology of shift work, and privately, he was an individualist with a wonky sense of humour and a sometimes unnerving mischievous streak.

He'll be hugely missed, and he leaves behind a legacy that will be with us all for the next generation.

Zander and B have passed from this world now, but the two of them had an unforgettable impact on many people, not least, of course, on those of us who they created and nurtured.

With our deepest love, Chris, Pete, Joanna, Rebecca xxxx

Peter Wedderburn <pete@brayvet.com>, Christopher Wedderburn <chriswedd2@gmail.com>

27th February 2017

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Human Rights v Bill of Rights: What’s In It For Workers?

Joint Meeting with the Industrial Law Society

Speaker: Professor Tonia Novitz

Professor of Labour Law, University of Bristol Law School

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 16 March 6pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

One of the key Conservative 2015 election manifesto pledges was to ‘scrap the Human Rights Act and introduce a British Bill of Rights’. While for the time being, this proposal seems to have been shelved, it could re-surface at short notice. Indeed, Brexit may set the stage for such an initiative.

This presentation will examine workers’ rights that arise by virtue of Articles 4, 8, 9, 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, with reference to Conservative demands for ‘a proper balance between rights and responsibilities’. It will also address implications of decline in the influence of the European Court of Human Rights, as the British judiciary ‘take back control’. It emerges that there may be little in a British Bill of Rights for workers, but a great deal potentially for employers.   

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact: 

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

27th February 2017

Job Opportunities at Equity

Equity have two job opportunities which may be of interest to you, your  colleagues, current or former students. Please visit the Equity website for more details about these vacancies and to download application materials:  https://www.equity.org.uk/news-and-events/equity-news/job-opportunity-at-equity/

24th February 2017

A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Human Resource Management

20th February 2017

BUIRA ​conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

BUIRA conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

BUIRA conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

Portsmouth, 28th-30th June 2017

A reminder that the deadline for submission of abstracts is 17th February 2017.

Abstracts of papers (500 words max) should be submitted via the BUIRA website:

https://www.buira.org/conference/7

Registration for BUIRA 2017 in Portsmouth is now open.

Please visit our website for details of the conference fees and how to register, information about the conference location (the University of Portsmouth Business School), suggestions for accommodation in Portsmouth and travel information.

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

There is a link on this page to the online store for the purposes of registration and payment.

You can also use the online store to reserve campus-based accommodation in Rees Hall (overlooking Southsea Common and the seafront), with a single en-suite room with breakfast costing £45.00 per night.

16th February 2017

Buira conference 2017: 28th - 30th June 2017 Final deadline for abstracts

BUIRA conference 2017: 28th - 30th June 2017 Final deadline for abstracts

Tomorrow, 17^th February 2017, is the day of the final deadline for abstract submission on the BUIRA website. To have the chance to present your research in Portsmouth, you have all of today and tomorrow to submit an abstract!

Abstracts of papers (500 words max) should be submitted via the BUIRA website:

https://www.buira.org/conference/7

16th February 2017

BUIRA ​conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

BUIRA conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

BUIRA conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

Portsmouth, 28th-30th June 2017

A reminder that the deadline for submission of abstracts is 17th February 2017.

Abstracts of papers (500 words max) should be submitted via the BUIRA website:

https://www.buira.org/conference/7

Registration for BUIRA 2017 in Portsmouth is now open.

Please visit our website for details of the conference fees and how to register, information about the conference location (the University of Portsmouth Business School), suggestions for accommodation in Portsmouth and travel information.

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

There is a link on this page to the online store for the purposes of registration and payment.

You can also use the online store to reserve campus-based accommodation in Rees Hall (overlooking Southsea Common and the seafront), with a single en-suite room with breakfast costing £45.00 per night.

10th February 2017

Unions21 Conference 21 March, London

Unions21 Conference 21 March, London

Call for poster submissions. Deadline 14th March.

Details of the conference including how to register are at http://unions21.org.uk/events/unions21-conference-2017-1

Unions 21 is an organisation which supports unions to increase their

influence, impact and effectiveness by working with members,

supporters and stakeholders to create an open space for research,

innovation and activity. Our 

current work themes are new economies, new workers, good work and

innovation and change.

Our 2017 annual conference on 21 March will 

highlight work under those three themes that is already being

undertaken by researchers and academics. Our audience is a

combination of senior union leaders, officers and a growing academic

body and this is an opportunity to engage with 

leading practitioners.  By looking  to showcase the best, most

interesting and thought provoking work, the conference will hold the interest whether you are a PhD student, lecturer or professor.

8th February 2017

Manchester Industrial Relations Society Meeting

Manchester Industrial Relations Society Meeting

The Gender Pay Gap

and the Changing Role of Women in the Labour Market

Speaker: Sally Brett

Head of Equalities, British Medical Association

(formerly Senior Equality Policy Officer, Trades Union Congress)

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 23 February 6pm-7.30pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society contact

Professor Ralph Darlington,

Salford Business School,

University of Salford

Salford M5 4WT

phone: 0161-295-5456; website: www.mirs.org.uk Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

8th February 2017

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON TEAMWORKING

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON TEAMWORKING 21: PUTTING

KNOWLEDGE INTO TEAM DESIGN

Trondheim, Norway, 7 and 8 September 2017

Call for papers

Teams remain important building blocks in organization design, and are set up to perform a wide variety of functions and tasks. IWOT aims for cross-disciplinary interaction and welcomes papers that deal with all aspects of team working from different theoretical perspectives and methodologies.

For IWOT 21 we particularly welcome papers on the following themes:

1. Creating knowledge through teamwork: The creation of knowledge, fundamental to organizational learning and innovation, is a collective activity. Knowledge creation may happen spontaneously as people from different backgrounds come together, or may be planned for by establishing parallel team structures and providing the necessary infrastructure and support. We welcome papers on both knowledge creation processes and how knowledge-creating teams are embedded in the wider organization.

2. Team working in knowledge-intensive organizations: Knowledge-intensive organizations face an environmental complexity that demands cross-functional teams, multi-teams and/or virtual collaboration across loose organizational boundaries. These organizations should be flexible and find ways to support and regulate teams' autonomy contingent on environmental demands and limitations. The multi-team context implies that there are dependencies to other teams, while the distributed context incurs that the teams must deal with geographical dispersion of team members, teams or units.

3. Team working in industry: Ideas about team working have had a major impact on shop-floor work organization through concepts such as socio-technical design, lean production and continuous improvement. In the modern industrial organization, teams are also widely used to perform additional functions such as product design, product development and R&D. Furthermore, project teams are set up to deal with non-routine tasks and complex problem solving such as implementing new technology or exploring new business opportunities. We welcome theoretical reflections and empirical studies on both classical topics and new developments, for instance on how digitalization creates new possibilities for interaction or how calls for sustainability increase the number of team stakeholders and issues that need to be taken into account.

Deadlines and submission

Abstracts should be no more than 750 words. Please forward abstracts to jonas.ingvaldsen@iot.ntnu.no

Deadline for submission of abstracts: May 1

Decisions on acceptance/reject: May 15

Submission of full paper: August 15

About the workshop

For more information about the workshop, please see our web site at: https://iwotblog.wordpress.com/

8th February 2017

PHD Scholarships Sheffield Hallam University in HRM, Employment Relations and Sociology of Work deadline February 24th 2017

Sheffield Hallam University have PHD scholarships in Sheffield Business School and invitations are due for a submission deadline of 24^th February 2017.

Details are on Sheffield Business School https://www.shu.ac.uk/study-here/fees-and-funding/postgraduate/postgraduate-scholarships/phd-scholarships/apply .

Scholarships in Human Resource Management, Employment Relations  and Sociology of Work are strongly recommended to contact Professor Peter Prowse at Sheffield Business School on  p.prowse@shu.ac.uk.

6th February 2017

Buira conference 2017: 28th - 30th June 2017

Buira conference 2017: 28th - 30th June 2017 

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! 

The ABSTRACT submission deadline has been extended to 
Friday, February 17 (final deadline).

With best wishes

The BUIRA team

6th February 2017

L/SL POSTS IN HRM/OB AT DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY

L/SL POSTS IN HRM/OB AT DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY

The Department of HRM at DMU, which is home to the Contemporary Research on Organisations, Work and Employment (CROWE) research group is expanding by recruiting 3 posts at Lecturer/Senior Lecturer level. We are currently seeking applicants who can design and deliver modules in a creative and innovative way which ensures a positive student learning experience. Delivery will be across a range of undergraduate, postgraduate, distance and blended distance learning programmes. Our strengths include: Excellent REF results; nationally and internationally recognised research; Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Approved Centre status with accreditation for programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level; and excellent NSS (National Student Survey) results.

These positions are an ideal next step if you are keen to progress your academic career in a dynamic, collegiate and highly supportive department.

Details of the posts can be found in the links below:

https://jobs.dmu.ac.uk/webrecruitment/Default.asp?Section=Vacancy&VacID=10375

https://jobs.dmu.ac.uk/webrecruitment/Default.asp?Section=Vacancy&VacID=10376

6th February 2017

Call for papers: special issue of Economic and Industrial Democracy on Trade Union and Democracy

I would like to ask to include the announcement of this call for paper in the next BUIRA News:

Call for Papers – Special Issue of ‘Economic and Industrial Demcoracy’ on Trade Unions and Democracy, in memory of Giulio Regeni 

The Special Issue is edited by Lucio Baccaro, Chiara Benassi and Guglielmo Meardi. Contributions from/on non-western countries and from early-career researchers are particularly welcome. 

For details:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/research/irru/hp-contents/call_for_papers-regeni.pdf 

Guglielmo, Lucio and Chiara

3rd February 2017

BUIRA IR History seminar on American Labour Migration and Organisation 22 March 2017

BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group 

Labour in Late 19th century America: Migration and Organization 

Wednesday, 22 March 2017, 4.30– 7.00

(Tea/coffee from 4.15pm, drinks/nibbles from 6.30pm)

Room C181, University of Westminster Business School, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube) 

For further details or to reserve a place,

please email Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk) 

Programme:

4.30-5.00pm: Tea/coffee/refreshments 

5.00pm: Welcome: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs) 

5.00-5.30pm: Kim Moody (Independent scholar resident in London)  

Tramps & Trade Union Travellers: How Geographic Mobility Undermined Organized Labour in Gilded Age America

The decades following the American Civil War saw massive internal migration across the continent, from farm to city, and city to city on a far greater scale than in Europe. Employment was often irregular and both skilled and unskilled workers tramped and travelled to find work. Along with recurring economic turbulence and the movement of industry itself, this migration undermined labour organization for much of period from 1870 to 1900. 

5.30-6.00pm: Steven Parfitt (Associate Lecturer at the University of Derby)

The Knights of Labor and the Fraternal Tradition

The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens, was the first significant national labour organization in the USA. This presentation addresses its history and situates it within the framework of fraternalism and fraternal movements. Fraternalism has usually been overlooked in most accounts of labour history and working-class movements, and where it is mentioned it is usually done so in a derisive way. This paper aims to recover, or start to recover, this tradition and to think about what fraternalism might mean for us now. 

6.00-6.30pm: General discussion/ close

6.30-7.00pm: Drinks 

The speakers:

Kim Moody was a labour journalist in the US with the publication Labor Notes for many years, and author of five books and many articles on trade unionism and politics. His latest is In Solidarity: Essay in Working Class Organization in the United States, Haymarket Books, 2014. He has a PhD. in American Studies from the University of Nottingham. 

Steven Parfitt is a historian of British, American and global labour history. His first book, Knights Across the Atlantic, has been published with Liverpool University Press. He has written ten articles in academic journals and others in the Guardian, Jacobin and TheConversation.com. He teaches a wide range of historical subjects at Derby, Loughborough and Nottingham on casual contracts and is looking for that elusive first post.

2nd February 2017

London BUIRA seminar Labour and Global Governance 24 February 2017

Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Labour and global governance

Dr Frank Hoffer on The significance for labour of changes in global governance (Bureau for Workers’ Activities, ILO)

Dr Yvonne Rueckert (University of Portsmouth) on Global unions and World Bank and IMF policies

Discussant: Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck College London) 

Friday 24 February 2017, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)
Room C279 (lunch C287) 

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)  

This regular monthly seminar is focused on the changing nature of the global governance system and the interaction of some of its actors, including the Global Unions, the ILO and the international financial organisations (IMF and World Bank). Frank Hoffer will discuss changes in global governance and their significance for trade unions everywhere, arguing too that the deeper engagement of trade unions with the ILO is essential in the decent work agenda. Yvonne Rueckert from the University of Portsmouth, will show how the formalised dialogue between the Global Unions and the IFIs has developed since an agreement was signed by the international actors in 2002. Her research explores factors which hinder and promote the progress of a dialogue that can be considered as a strategic instrument for the Global Unions in providing them with a means to influence IFIs policies and to shape the rules and institutions of global governance towards a more worker-friendly regime.   

Frank Hoffer is senior research officer at the Bureau for Workers Activities of the ILO, focussing on social protection, working conditions and labour standards, and the international coordinator of the Global Labour University network. His is engaged on the project ‘Governance by Contract?: The Impact of the International Finance Corporation's Social Conditionality on Worker Organization and Social Dialogue’. His publications include:

2011. "Decent Work 2.0". Social Europe Journal; 2011. "International Labour Standards: An Old Instrument Revisited". Social Europe Journal; 2010. "The Great Recession: A Turning Point for Labour". Int. Jnl of Labour Research 2(1); 2009. "Don’t waste the crisis: The case for sustained public investment and wage-led recovery policies". Global Labour Column 

Yvonne Rueckert is a senior lecturer in International Employment Relations at Portsmouth Business School, having previously worked at the University of Bradford Management School, the University of Bochum (Germany), and University of Oviedo (Spain). Her PhD, supported by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, focused on international labour standards and the dialogue between the Global Unions and the international financial institutions (World Bank and IMF). Her general research focus is on international comparative employment relations and organization theory. 

The discussant, Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, from Birkbeck College, specialises in international governance and was a former official of the International Union of Food and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) and of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).  

This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend this event. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke,  clarkel@wmin.ac.uk or 020350 66528 

LATER LONDON BUIRA SEMINARS INCLUDE:

31 March 2017 Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI, Room C279 (lunch C287)

28 April 2017, Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation, with Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship and Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases Room: C279 (lunch C287)

1st February 2017

Internship Advert - ITF

We currently have an Internship role in our Women Transport Workers
Department at the ITF that we would like to advertise on your website.
Please see attached project information and advert.

The internship will be for a period of 8 weeks (35 hours per week)
commencing from 10 July to 1 September 2017 and it will be based in London.

The role will close on Tuesday 28^th February 2017.

Kindly refer to our website for more information regarding the ITF
http://www.itfglobal.org/en/global/

30th January 2017

Employment Relations Book

A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Employment Relations

Tony Dundon - Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, National University of Ireland, Ireland

Niall Cullinane - Queen's University Management School, Queen's University Belfast

Adrian Wilkinson - Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing, Griffith Business School, Griffith University

Conceived by Chris Grey and written to get you thinking, the “Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap” series offers an informal and accessible yet sophisticated and critical overview of what you find in conventional textbooks.

In Employment Relations the authors translate years of experience, with the help of interesting vignettes, real life examples and connections with popular culture, into a critical understanding of the topic that brings the field to life.

An excellent supplementary text for Employment Relations and HRM students or anyone interested in a short, succinct book on the subject of Employment Relations.

30th January 2017

Scottish Labour History journal

Scottish Labour History journal – call for proposals for papers for 2017 edition

Of the many important centenaries that have abounded in the early part of our new millennium, for the study of labour history none is more important than that of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. It was a world historic turning point. For the first time anywhere under capitalism, workers made a successful bid for power, seeking to reshape society in their own image. We are all well aware of the unfolding events following the revolution, be they the civil war, the Stalinization of Soviet Russia, and the impact on revolutionary and working class movements throughout the world. These events gave rise to, and testify to, the divergence of thought and belief on what constitutes socialism and communism, representing a second major division in what had previously been a largely united international socialist movement. Such divisions have been keenly played out within the study of labour history.

Scottish Labour History, the annual journal of the Scottish Labour History Society and now in its 51st year, will mark the centenary of the October Revolution with its 2017 edition, organized on the theme of ‘The October Revolution and its legacy’.

To this end, we wish to make a call for submissions to this journal on the broad themes of the impact and influence of the October Revolution on the labour, trade union and working class movements in Scotland and the British Isles. What we have in mind are most obviously articles on how these existing movements were affected by, and developed in the light of, the October Revolution. We are also interested in submissions on how these movements sought to interpret, utilize and respond to the October Revolution. In doing so, Scottish Labour History seeks submissions which do not merely look at the ‘external’ impact of the October Revolution upon these shores, but also how domestic dynamics conditioned the response to the external development represented by the October Revolution. So we are keen to see submissions which either bring to the table new historical research on these matters or examine the state of our knowledge and understanding of these processes and outcomes.

(NB Scottish Labour History will also publish papers in its 2017 edition which are not related to this special call for papers. Therefore, any other submissions will also be considered.)

Scottish Labour History publishes paper of between 8,000-10,000 words and research notes of between 4,000-6,000 words. We are calling for abstracts of 500 words for either full papers or research notes on the theme of ‘The October Revolution and its legacy’.

Please send them to the co-editors, either Professor Gregor Gall (g.gall@bradford.ac.uk) or Dr Jim Phillips (James.Phillips@glasgow.ac.uk) by 1 March 2017 at the latest. 

30th January 2017

BUIRA ​conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

BUIRA conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

We are pleased to announce that registration for BUIRA 2017 in Portsmouth is now open.

Please visit our website for details of the conference fees and how to register, information about the conference location (the University of Portsmouth Business School), suggestions for accommodation in Portsmouth and travel information.

http://www.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/events/buira-2017/

There is a link on this page to the online store for the purposes of registration and payment.

You can also use the online store to reserve campus-based accommodation in Rees Hall (overlooking Southsea Common and the seafront), with a single en-suite room with breakfast costing £45.00 per night.

Abstracts of papers (500 words max) should be submitted via the BUIRA website:

https://www.buira.org/conference/7

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 3rd February 2017.

26th January 2017

Special Issue Call for Proposals: Human Resource Management Journal

Please visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1748-8583 for details of the call for proposals for Special Issues of Human Resource Management Journal (HRMJ). Proposals should be submitted to HRMJ.journal@wiley.com<HRMJ.journal@wiley.com> by 31st January 2017.

Human Resource Management Journal is a scholarly journal that seeks to promote the understanding of HRM to academics and practising managers. HRMJ aims to promote the theory and practice of HRM, to provide an international forum for discussion and debate, and to stress the critical importance of people management to a wide range of economic, political and social concerns. Since 2006, HRMJ has broadened its editorial scope to become more globally orientated and has strengthened the international character of its Editorial Team and Board.

Journal Reputation & Rankings:

HRMJ is ranked 4 in The Chartered Association of Business Schools' Academic Journal Guide 2016, and 'A' in the Australian Business Deans Council Journal Rankings List. According to the ISI Journal Citation Reports, HRMJ is ranked 6/26 in Industrial Relations and Labor and 71/192 in Management. The current impact factor is 1.845.

Editors-in-Chief:

Elaine Farndale, Pennsylvania State University, USA / Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Anthony McDonnell, Queen’s University (soon to move University College Cork, Ireland)

Dora Scholarios, University of Strathclyde, UK

Adrian Wilkinson, Griffith University, Australia

Associate Editors:

Katie Bailey, University of Sussex, UK

Edel Conway, Dublin City University, Ireland

Anders Dysvik, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway

Martin Edwards, King's College London, UK

Kaifeng Jiang, Mendoza College of Business at University of Notre Dame, USA

Gill Kirton, Queen Mary University of London, UK

Mila Lazarova, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Helen Liu, Pennsylvania State University, USA

Ashly H. Pinnington, The British University in Dubai, UAE

Amanda Pyman, Monash University, Australia

B. Sebastian Reiche, IESE Business School, Spain

Juani Swart, Bath University, UK

Andrew Timming, University of St Andrews, UK

Current Calls for Papers:

Special Issue: Exploring trade-offs between employee well-being and organizational performance: The role of Human Resource Management

Guest Editors: Karina Van De Voorde, Marc Van Veldhoven and Riccardo Peccei

Submission deadline: 1 March 2017

Call for papers: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/(ISSN)1748-8583/asset/homepages/HRMJ_Special_Issue_CFP.pdf?v=1&s=cbe1bfc5a550affeb7d1b88e06b739a0204b1e12

Special Issue: New Avenues in International Careers Research

Guest Editors: Adam Smale, Jon Briscoe, Michael Dickman, Wolfgang Mayrhofer and Emma Parry

Submission deadline: 3 April 2017

Call for papers: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/(ISSN)1748-8583/asset/homepages/Special_Issue_CfP__HRMJ_.pdf?v=1&s=d40c89393dee3438d7bf2406587e01bd176a987a

Warm regards,

Elaine Farndale, Anthony McDonnell, Dora Scholarios, and Adrian Wilkinson

Editors-in-Chief

24th January 2017

BUIRA conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

BUIRA conference 2017: The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

Please note - this is the Abstract submission link (do not submit via email) - it must be done via the BUIRA website

https://www.buira.org/conference/7

Call for papers now open – until 3^rd February 2017, click here to submit an abstract

The theme of BUIRA 2017 is the Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers. The conference will take place a little over a year after a referendum which resulted in a narrow vote in favour of the UK leaving the European Union (EU). Therefore it will provide an ideal opportunity for participants not only to explore and discuss the future of industrial relations in the UK outside of the EU, but also to consider the portents for industrial relations in Europe and around the world in general. New borders may be springing up, and existing borders hardening, but the frontiers of industrial relations continue to be pushed back, and extended, in some notable ways.

Linked to the rise of right-wing populist politics in many parts of Europe, borders between countries have hardened. To what extent, and in what ways, is it now appropriate to contemplate the implications of further European disintegration for industrial relations, rather than integration? 2017 marks the tenth anniversary of the financial crisis. How far has industrial relations been transformed in Europe under conditions of austerity? To what extent do the ‘European social model’ and the EU’s ‘social dimension’ offer an alternative to a neo-liberal paradigm that has been responsible for a dearth of high quality jobs?

To a large extent, the UK vote to leave the EU reflected discontent about stagnant living standards, growing labour commodification, and the adverse consequences of austerity, which many people, influenced by a partisan media, blamed on EU migration. We have seen the rise of irregular working arrangements (including zero-hour contracts), precarious employment, and bogus self-employment, often associated with the rise of the ‘gig economy’. Yet unions and civil society organizations have made considerable efforts to represent, organize and mobilize workers at the sharp end of labour market change. Workers in the ‘gig economy’ are prepared to challenge employers, often in resourceful and imaginative ways, highlighting the continued relevance of labour conflict. What are the prospects for re-regulating industrial relations, and how does re-regulation manifest itself? In the UK, Theresa May’s government has talked about doing more to reduce inequality, putting workers’ representatives on company boards, and tackling abusive working practices.

Yet this coexists with the recently enacted Trade Union Act 2016 which imposes significant additional restrictions on unions. What, then, is the significance of governmental efforts to re-regulate relations? What are the main trends in respect of multi-level regulation? What is the future of supranational regulation in a clearly ailing EU? And how can we better understand global labour governance arrangements?

In discussing questions like these, participants at BUIRA 2017 will play a key part in exploring the changing face of industrial relations. The frontiers of industrial relations as a field of study continue to expand, providing crucial insights into work, employment, and employment relations in twenty-first century societies. We look forward to receiving submissions that reflect this. Although we welcome papers that concern any area of industrial relations, papers concerning topics under the following three headings will be particularly welcome: 

The changing face of industrial relations: a decade of austerity - the crisis and industrial relations in Europe, 2007-17; public sector industrial relations in a time of austerity; managing industrial relations in a financialized, market economy; ‘commodified’ labour – irregular work, precarious employment and bogus self-employment; the changing nature of work and employment; jobs, skills and the quality of work in the low-pay economy; the impact of the National Living Wage; social class, equality and diversity in industrial relations.

New borders in industrial relations: the prospects of European (dis)integration for industrial relations; the politics of the European social model; labour mobility and migrant workers; re-regulating industrial relations – at national, sub-national and supra-national level; devolved government and industrial relations; global labour governance arrangements; the activities of labour movements across national borders

New frontiers in industrial relations: digitalization and digital labour – implications for work, workers, and societies; working, managing and organizing in the ‘gig economy’; new, neglected and emerging actors in employment relations; new and emerging manifestations of labour conflict.

Empirical (both quantitative and qualitative), analytical, conceptual and methodological papers are all welcome. We would particularly appreciate submissions from early career researchers and doctoral students.

Submission details

Abstracts of papers should be submitted via the BUIRA website via this link.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 3rd February 2017.

Abstracts are refereed anonymously by BUIRA Executive Committee members.

Decisions will be notified by late March 2017.

20th January 2017

Restructuring, deindustrialisation and redundancy: contemporary debates and issues

Work and Employment Research Unit Seminar Series

Centre for Research on Management, Economy and Society, Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire

Title: Restructuring, deindustrialisation and redundancy: contemporary debates and issues

Date: Wednesday February 15^th 2017

Time: 13:00 – 17:00

Location: Room W040, Law Building, de Havilland campus, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9E

This is an open seminar, but please contact Chris McLachlan to confirm attendance and for any further information – c.mclachlan3@herts.ac.uk

Ola Bergström, Gothenburg University, Sweden

Changing restructuring regimes in eleven European Member States after the financial crisis

This paper is concerned with the developments in a selection of European Member States since the global financial crisis in 2008 as regards how the policy frameworks to manage organizational restructuring has changed. Restructuring is here used as a unifying concept for all types of changes in work arrangements that, from the point of view of the individual worker, imply a change in employment status or working conditions. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the economic crisis on the national restructuring regimes and to identify how the changing policy frameworks affect the conditions for employers’ social responsibility as regards restructuring. The comparative analysis in this paper is based on data collected by an international group of researchers in a EU-financed project “MOLIERE” analysed through the restructuring regime framework suggested by Gazier (2008). The findings show that there are considerable changes in the way restructuring is managed and regulated in the selection of European Member States. Member States are increasingly adopting measures aiming at facilitating quantitative adjustment, primarily through the use of working time reduction schemes, which enables firms to reduce their labour costs when demand suddenly decreases. A second group of Member States are adopting measures that support qualitative adjustment, for example transition services designed to help workers find new jobs. The third main movement is a shift in the role of the state, with declining use of state funded early retirement scheme and an increasing involvement of social partners. The findings suggest that the changing restructuring regimes has implications for the practice and definition of employer social responsibility.

Ola Bergström is Professor in Management and Organisation at the Department of Business Administration at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Göteborg, Sweden. He obtained his doctorate at the University of Gothenburg in 1998. His research interests evolve around the interface between organizations and labour markets and in particular the field of restructuring in a European context. He has published articles and books on a wide range of topics such recruitment, corporate social responsibility, and temporary agency work, restructuring and labour market policy. He has taken part in several European projects on Restructuring in Europe (e.g. MIRE, IRENE, ARENAS and MOLIERE). He is chairman of the centre for Global Human Resource Management at the University of Gothenburg and is currently one of four members of the Economic Council for Swedish Industry which provides independent analyses to the social partners of the Swedish manufacturing industry

Tim Strangleman, University of Kent

Picturing work, envisaging closure: The life and death of an English Brewery

In 2005 the Guinness brewery at Park Royal in west London closed its doors after nearly 70 years of production. From its foundation in the 1930s through to its final years the brewery acts as a powerful ‘privileged occasion’ for understanding the changing nature of the organisation and work more generally in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This paper will draw on the author’s extensive research in the brewery before closure and in Company archives to tell this story. Using oral history interviews, archive material and a huge range of visual material it will reflect on what one company’s trajectory can tell us more generally about capitalism historically and in contemporary society. In doing so it engages with issues such as industrial citizenship, work meaning and identity, and corporate image making.

Tim Strangleman, FAcSS is Professor of Sociology, in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, SSPSSR, University of Kent, Canterbury. He has researched and written widely on work identity, culture and meaning; traditional industries in decline and deindustrialisation. Tim is an historical sociologist who uses oral history and visual methods and approaches in his research. He has published articles in a range of journals including Sociology, IJURR, Sociological Review and ILWCH. He is the author of two books: (2008) Work and Society: Sociological Approaches, Themes and Methods, with Tracey Warren, Routledge; and (2004) Work Identity at the End of the Line? Privatisation and Culture Change in the UK Rail Industry, Palgrave. He is currently completing a book based on his Guinness research to be published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Ian Greenwood, University of Leeds

Strategic Choice and the response of trade unions to Industrial Restructuring

 As restructuring gathers pace, the strategies for engagement between unions and management become increasingly important to understand. This paper, hence, presents an investigation and assessment of the strategic choices of management and unions in response to industrial restructuring as manifested through collective bargaining and as liminal moments.

Understanding union responses to restructuring cannot be adequately captured through a conceptualisation of bargaining strategies as occurring only at a local or international level or as wholly adversarial or cooperative. The industrial relations of restructuring is played out in a complex social space, contingent upon history, (mystic chords of memory and path dependent propensities), culture, geography, corporate and union strategies, ‘dominant coalitions’ and the influence of key individuals. Although a significant body of research offers insight into union responses to management strategies for restructuring, at the micro level of strategy formation and collective bargaining strategies and tactics, research is though, somewhat underdeveloped.

The conceptual framework for analysis is provided by a modified Strategic Choice model (Walton, Katz and McKersie). Just as the particular phase of engagement can govern the orientation of union responses to restructuring, so intra organisational bargaining within management can modulate dominant management ideological predilections. Strategic choices and processes are dynamic and reflect the ebb and flow of power relationships both within and between management and unions. The empirical basis for this evolving research is provided by a multi-level, qualitative study of restructuring in the UK steel industry.

Ian Greenwood is Associate Professor of Industrial Relations and HRM at the Leeds University Business School (LUBS) and member of the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change centered on the Work and Employment Relations Division at LUBS. He has been engaged in a number of research projects connected to the steel and metals sector. These include the evaluation of the role that lifelong learning strategies might play in response to the processes of restructuring in the European steel and metal sectors and the potential of partnership based approaches for furthering the learning agenda and employability. Also, the socio-economic consequences of the contraction of the UK steel industry. He also researches the role of union learning representatives and their impact on workplace skill formation; team working; trade union activism and renewal including Community Unionism. Other research interests include the contemporary nature of collective bargaining.

Chris McLachlan, University of Hertfordshire

Internalising the experience of restructuring: steelworkers and occupational identity

The impact of redundancy on affected employees following employment restructuring includes issues such as poor health, financial hardship, emotional and psychological distress and feelings of helplessness towards future employment. Addressing the impact on individuals in industries that generate a powerful sense of occupational identity, such as steel, is especially important in understanding the different ways in which employees respond to restructuring. In order to try and ameliorate the impact on employees, responsible restructuring has been proposed in the academic and policy literature as way for organisations to address the concerns of those affected.

Thus, this paper presents the findings from a case study of UK based steel plant (SteelCo) that claimed to have conducted its restructuring process in a responsible fashion. In particular, the impact of the restructuring, and the supposed responsible approach, on affected steelworkers is discussed, highlighting a range of social, cultural, material and experiential factors most pertinent to the response of employees to SteelCo’s restructuring process. The findings presented point to the notion that, for steelworkers, the experience of restructuring had become internalised as part of what it meant to work at SteelCo, generating an indifference to SteelCo’s description of its process as ‘responsible’. Understanding the extent to which a restructuring process is responsible, or not, must therefore be understood in relation to the social and historical factors that constitute particular occupational identities, and thus the subsequent disposition of employees to the onset of restructuring processes.

Chris McLachlan is Senior Lecturer in Human Resources at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire. His main research interests lie in the intersections between employment relations and business ethics, and is currently finishing up his PhD from Leeds University Business School, exploring responsible approaches to restructuring in the UK steel industry.

20th January 2017

A future for Post Industrial communities? An action orientated conference hosted by Leeds University’s Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change (CERIC)

A future for Post Industrial communities?

An action orientated conference hosted by Leeds University’s Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change (CERIC) in collaboration with the national campaigning organisation HOPE not hate
23/24 March Leeds

registration: https://goo.gl/forms/uVAwLQzQ3M1DNkT23

Plenary sessions

– The challenges faced by postindustrial communities

– Why have post-industrial communities been failed?

– Who are the agents of change i– these communities?

– Challenging narratives of race, racism and immigration

– Organising around health disadvantage and poverty in post-industrial communities

Workshops

– Conveying the crisis in postindustrial communities (in 140 characters).

– Building power and effecting change

– If ‘myth busting’ doesn’t work, how do we address division and fear?

– Resourcing and organising in post industrial communities.

The process of deindustrialisation has destabilised many working class communities across the country. The large industrial workplaces (docks, mines, steel works, potteries, and car plants) have often disappeared. In towns which once had an industrial identity, that has gone, along with the high levels of trade union engagement, the sports and social clubs. Even the pubs are going. Meanwhile the once solid relationship between the communities and their traditional representatives; the Labour Party, has become ‘more complex’.

These post-industrial communities face a future where parents know that their children's future is significantly less promising than their own was, where 'career opportunities' are often limited to work in low wage jobs such as retail parks and where the traditional sense of community has often been replaced by an uneasy division along ethnic, social and religious lines.

All of this raises a number of questions for academics, economists, public health professionals, politicians, policy makers, trade unionists, funders, anti-racists and community activists. This conference aims to bring people from all these fields.

Contact j.holgate@leeds.ac.uk for further details.

20th January 2017

Vacancies at Warwick Business School

Assistant/Associate Professor Vacancies in HRM at Warwick Business Schools. Candidates with research interest in industrial relations are welcome. Deadline 3rd February.


http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AWI926/assistant-professor-in-human-resource-management-78900-126/
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AWM024/associate-professor-in-human-resource-management-78900-017/

20th January 2017

London BUIRA seminar January 27 on unions and industrial action in Germany and Britain

Central London BUIRA

Westminster Business School of the University of Westminster

35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (nearest tube Baker Street)

10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

For further details and to reserve a place, please contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

SEMINAR PROGRAMME 2017: Significant changes in labour organisation and employment nationally, in East and West Europe, and globally (see attached):

27 January 2017, Union membership and industrial action in Germany and Britain, Dr Heiner Dribbusch (Institute of Economic and Social Research, WSI, Germany) on Organising through conflict and Professor John Kelly (Birkbeck College) on Do strikes increase trade union membership? Room C419 (lunch C389)

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the impact of industrial action on trade union organising and membership in the contrasting cases of Germany and Britain. Heiner Dribbusch, of Hans-Böckler Stiftung, drawing on his recent paper published in the ETUI journal Transfer, examines strike activity in Germany between 2004 and 2015 in the public and private services sectors, particularly by United Services Union, ver.di, the second largest union. He shows how industrial disputes constitute decisive moments for unions to demonstrate their effectiveness, acting as a catalyst to union building, though not a magic bullet. In contrast, John Kelly from Birkbeck College, based on a 7 year dataset of trade union membership joiners and leavers from a major British trade union and drawing on a paper to be published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, shows how periods of strike action are associated with a significantly higher rate of membership and that new members are motivated by perceived injustice and union effectiveness.

Heiner Dribbusch is senior researcher at the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) within the Hans Böckler Stiftung His research fields cover trade union organising and trends in industrial action in Germany and Europe, wage policy, and trade union policies. His most recent publications include: ‘Trade Unions in Germany: Development, Challenges, Responses’ (with Peter Birke) in: Ingrid Artus et al. (eds.): Developments in German Industrial Relations, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2016, ‘Anti-Unionism in a Coordinated Market Economy: the Case of Germany’ (with Martin Behrens) in Gregor Gall/Tony Dundon (eds.) Global Anti-Unionism. Nature, Dynamics, Trajectories and Outcomes, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013;

John Kelly is Professor of Industrial Relations in the Department of Management at Birkbeck College whose main research interests are comparative employment relations, comparative labour politics and trade unionism. His most recent publications include Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform, Routledge. 2015, and ‘Conflict: trends and forms of collective action’, Employee Relations, 37(6): 1-13, 2015.

LATER LONDON BUIRA SEMINARS INCLUDE:

24 February 2017, Labour and global governance, Dr Frank Hoffer (Bureau for Workers’ Activities, ILO) and Dr Yvonne Rueckert (University of Portsmouth) on Global unions and World Bank and IMF policies, Discussant: Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck College) Room: C279 (lunch C287)

31 March 2017 Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI, Room C279 (lunch C287)

28 April 2017, Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation, with Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship and Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases Room: C279 (lunch C287)

16th January 2017

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES 

TACKLING LOW PAY: MINIMUM WAGE OR LIVING WAGE? 

WEDNESDAY 25 JANUARY 2017. 15.00 – 18.00  

ROOM QA238, QUEEN ANNE COURT, OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE, GREENWICH

This WERU seminar considers the mechanisms for tackling low pay in the UK, both statutory and voluntary. While the National Minimum Wage established in 1998 continues, from 2016 a new 25 year-old ‘National Living Wage’ rate was introduced by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. The impact of that change has yet to be fully researched but we have two presentations on initial research being conducted for the Low Pay Commission. We also have a presentation by Katherine Chapman of the Living Wage Campaign on progress towards a voluntary living wage level and a a presentation on research being conducted for the Welsh Government on the potential for a Wales Living Wage. We will have the following presentations.

Ken Mulkearn (Incomes Data Research). Ken will present on the the findings from a survey of employers for the Low Pay Commission about their implementation of the NLW. It looked in particular it looked at the effects of the NLW, now and in future, on pay and conditions, whether workforce profiles might change as result of the age threshold, the extent of effects on organisation of work and productivity measures and current and potential effects on costs, profits and prices. Ken Mulkearn is a founder of Incomes Data Research (IDR), established in 2015. IDR monitors pay and conditions developments across the economy, and reports on these in its regular Pay Climate e-bulletin. The organisation also conducts surveys of pay and conditions in specific sectors and labour markets and carries out a range of contract work for external clients in both the private and public sectors, including pay and benefits benchmarking, pay club surveys, job evaluation, and research on a variety of aspects of reward policy. Prior to founding IDR, he was Head of Pay and Research at Incomes Data Services (IDS), Ken speaks to a wide range of audiences on pay issues. He holds an MSc in social research methods from the London School of Economics, where he also took modules in industrial relations. His primary degree is from Trinity College, Dublin. For more information on IDR see http://incomesdataresearch.co.uk/ orhttps://twitter.com/payclimate

Professor Sian Moore (University of Greenwich). Sian’s presentation will explore the implications of non-standard employment contracts for hours and the organisation of working time and the consequent impact the introduction of the NLW (if any) may have on workers on non-standard employment contracts. It does so in the context of the increase in zero hours, variable hours, guaranteed hours contracts and misclassified self-employment’ (Dean, 2016; ONS, 2016). The presentation considers the possibility that with competition on the basis of low pay entrenched, there is some anticipation that the NLW will encourage more employers to substitute zero hours and variable hours contracts for ‘regular’ ones, notably at the lower end of the labour market (e.g. Philpott cited in The Guardian 02/09/2015). The presentation draws upon current research on homecare and logistics as well as the early stages of research for the Low Pay Commission. Sian Moore is Professor of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management and Director of the Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU) at the University of Greenwich. Her research centres on the relationship between gender and class, consciousness and activism. She has also published on statutory trade union recognition and trade union learning, equality reps and the British Airways dispute 2009-11. Her current research focus is work and employment in the logistics sector and on the pay and conditions of homecare workers.

Katherine Chapman (Living Wage Campaign). Katherine’s presentation will provide an overview of the Living Wage and the Foundation, where we are now and the reported benefits of the Living Wage for employees and businesses. Katherine Chapman joined the Living Wage Foundation as Director in March 2016. She has a background in working with industry leaders and policy makers to achieve change. Before joining the Foundation she was Assistant Director at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, a public body providing strategic leadership on employment and skills issues in the UK where she led on strategies to boost productivity, wages and social mobility. Previously Katherine was Head of Education and Skills at Policy Connect, a cross-party network of industry leaders and parliamentarians.

David Nash and Deborah Hann (University of Cardiff). David and Deborah will consider who pays the Living Wage and why. They will present initial findings from a recent survey of all accredited Living Wage employers and service providers, which is just under 3000 organisations.  After profiling the characteristics of accredited organisations the reasons for accreditation and the influences, both internal and external, that informed that decision will be considered.   They will consider any associated changes that have accompanied the implementation of the living wage and also examine the possible impact and involvement of stakeholders such as subcontractors and trade unions.  The scale and coverage of the living wage within accredited organisations will be outlined together with employers’ assessment of the effects of becoming accredited.  Finally, they will outline the impact of the Government’s own National Living Wage in April 2016 and how the voluntary Living Wage movement should respond going forward. David Nash has been Lecturer in Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School since 2003.  Before coming to Cardiff he was a researcher at Cambridge University, where he also completed his PhD examining the use of variable pay in the financial services sector.  David’s research has concentrated on the areas of remuneration, corporate governance and workplace conflict resolution.  He has undertaken research projects for the UK government, the Bevan Foundation and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service.   Deborah Hann is Lecturer in Employment Relations and researcher in UK and European Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School. Prior to joining Cardiff Business School, she completed a PhD at Manchester Business School and worked as a research fellow at Queen’s University.  She has worked on projects on the impact of European legislation on worker voice and on the resolution of conflict in the workplace.  More recently, Deborah has been looking at the presence and spread of conflict resolution practices within the UK.

This is an open seminar and all are invited but please can you inform us if you are planning to attend from outside the University of Greenwich by contacting myself, Professor Geoff White, on wg08@gre.ac.uk.

​

13th January 2017

CfP Special Session: Crisis, Post-Crisis & Employment Relations ESA RN17 conference in Athens 2017

We would like to invite you to participate in the 2017 European Sociological Association (ESA) Conference, which will bring together many distinguished researchers.

Research Network 17 of the ESA on Work, Employment and Industrial Relations organizes panels and sessions on various topics, themes and debates in the field of work, employment and industrial relations at the ESA 2017 conference.

The conference will be held in Athens (Greece) from 29th August to 1st September 2017.

See the conference website: www.esa13thconference.eu

Participants will find a good opportunity for presenting new research, exchanging information and discussing current issues in the field of Work, Employment and Industrial Relations. 

Although we encourage submissions on the general theme of the 2017 ESA conference "(Un)Making Europe: Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities", other submissions from the research network field - theoretical or empirical - are highly encouraged.

Abstract submission deadline: 1st February 2017

Abstract submission platform: www.esa13thconference.eu

If you have further questions on the conference, please visit the conference website or contact us directly:

Bernd Brandl, University of Durham (Email: bernd.brandl@durham.ac.uk)

Valeria Pulignano, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (Email: valeria.pulignano@soc.kuleuven.be)  

We are looking forward to seeing you in Athens in 2017.

11th January 2017

Manchester Industrial Relation Society Meeting

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Morrisons Supermarkets and Employment Relations

Speaker: Pete Monaghan

People Manager – Employment Relations, Morrisons Supermarkets

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 26 January 6pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/ 

Employment Relations (ER) within organisations has long been practised as a specialist function within the HR profession. In general terms ER practitioners mainly look after relationships with trade unions, manage Employment Tribunal claims and deal with varying degrees of intra-organisational conflict. We know that both union membership levels and the number of workplaces who recognise unions is on a long term decline. We know that since the introduction of ET fees the volume of cases has reduced dramatically.  

So what does a modern ER function do these days and more importantly how does it need to evolve to remain relevant within the HR profession? This presentation will draw on the experience of one of the UK’s leading and successful retail companies to reflect on broader challenges and opportunities for those in the ER (and Human Resources) function 

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

9th January 2017

ESCR Wales DTP PhD studentship in Global Language-Based Area Studies at Cardiff University: Evaluating Social Dialogue in Europe

This project will examine social dialogue in two EU member states as well as the articulation between national and European levels of social dialogue in these two states. One case will be characterised by strong union organisations and bargaining structures (Germany, Scandinavian countries) and one by weak unions and structures (Central and Eastern European countries) to analyse whether and under what conditions social dialogue can give voice to workers, whether this leads to consensus over macroeconomic and social policy and whether EU notions of social dialogue are transposable to all member states.

This PhD will focus on the following research questions:

Can social dialogue provide a forum for gaining consensus over social and macroeconomic policies, or do external economic constraints mitigate against ‘genuine’ social dialogue?

In a context of trade union weakness, can social dialogue give trade unions a voice in policy-making?

To what extent are EU policies on social dialogue transposable to, and to what extent do they articulate with, national settings where trade unions are weak?

This studentship also involves an internship with the European Trade Union Institute.

The award is available on either a 1+3 or +3 basis. A 1+3 studentship provides funding for four years (or part-time equivalent), completing a research training Masters in the 1st year, followed by three years research funding for a PhD. A +3 studentship provides funding for the three years PhD research study only (or part-time equivalent).

This studentships is a ‘collaborative’ award. Applicants should take careful consideration of the working title and description of the project, and may wish to contact the supervisors, particularly Dr Nick Parsons (Parsonsn@cf.ac.uk).

For academic queries about the scheme in general, please contact Prof Gordon Cumming (cumming@cf.ac.uk).

For any administrative questions, please contact Alex Ford (FordA9@cf.ac.uk). 

Application deadline: 1 February 2017 

For more details and the application process, please see: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/funding-and-fees/view/escr-wales-dtp-phd-studentship-in-global-language-based-area-studies-2.-evaluating-social-dialogue-in-europe

4th January 2017

Confront Change, Workshop at Congress House 11 January 2017

Confronting Change:

Globalization, Migration and Precarious Labour in the Age of Brexit 

On Wednesday 11 January 2017, the University of Exeter and the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department will host a public conference at Congress House, London. To register for this event please visit the Eventbrite page for the conference. The event is free to attend and all are welcome but space is limited. 

The EU referendum has brought to the fore debates concerning the effects of globalization, migration and casual or ‘precarious’ labour in twenty-first century Britain. These issues are not limited to the U.K., however. Over the course of the past three decades the dominance of neo-liberal economics, and the associated processes of privatisation and de-regulation, have contributed to widening inequality and a decline in formal sector employment across the globe. For organised labour movements these pressures have brought ever greater challenges, as trade unions have fought to resist the erosion of hard won labour rights and protect the living standards of their members. On these issues trade unions have won some notable victories but it is clear that further challenges lie ahead. Indeed, for all neo-liberalism’s dominance over the past thirty years, the world finds itself at a crossroads. The 2008 financial crash; the debt and migration crises within Europe; the election of Donald Trump and rise of protectionism in the United States; and Brexit have all served to shake the foundations of the established global order. In turn, these events have led to a polarised debate between those who favour a renewed push for ever-greater levels of global inter-dependence and those that advocate a return to economic nationalism. For trade unions the challenge is not to allow this uncertainty to accelerate recent changes within the labour market, particularly with regard to the exploitation of migrants and undercutting of existing workforces, the rise of precarious labour and the imposition of stricter trade union laws. Instead trade unions should continue their active role in shaping debates about the deleterious effects of casualization and the infringement of labour rights by both states and employers. 

The aim of this one day conference is to bring together academics, policymakers and trade union activists to reflect on the impact of globalization, migration and precarious labour and to consider the role of trade unions in the age of Brexit. The workshop will investigate the following questions: 

What is the relationship between globalization, migration and precarious labour?

Is precarious labour a new phenomenon or does it have a deeper history?

How can trade unions mobilise casual workers in order to protect the rights of the so-called ‘precariat’?

How can trade unions contribute to debates concerning the free movement of labour? How can trade unions represent increasingly transient and mobile ‘transnational’ workforces?

What does Brexit mean for trade union rights and freedoms in Britain? What role can trade unions play as a progressive force in post-Brexit Britain and Europe? 

Timetable 

Confronting Change:

Globalization, Migration and Precarious Labour Post-Brexit 

10.30-11.00 Tea/Coffee 

11.00-11.15 Introduction 

11.15-12.30 Panel One: The Rise of Precarious Labour 

Marcel van der Linden, International Institute for Social History 

Esther Lynch, Confederal Secretary, European Trade Union Confederation 

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch 

13.30 – 14.45 Panel Two: Trade Unions and Globalization 

Andreas Bieler, University of Nottingham 

Gail Cartmail, Acting Assistant General Secretary, Unite Union 

14.45 – 15.00 Coffee Break 

15.00 – 16.15 Panel Three: Trade Unions and the Challenge of Migration 

Heather Connolly, De Montfort University, Leicester 

Rosa Crawford, Policy Officer, EU and International Relations, TUC 

16.15 – 16.30 Concluding Remarks

4th January 2017

Call for Proposals, LERA Winter Meeting, Philadelphia, January 2018.

 Labor and Employment Relations Association Call for Symposia & Paper Proposals LERA 2018 Winter Meeting, Philadelphia, PA January 5-7, 2018 (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday)

For full information: https://lera.memberclicks.net/2018-call-for-proposals-lera-winter-meeting

" Robust Labor Markets and Employment Relationships: Policy and Research"

Submission Deadline: Submit to the LERA website by March 9, 2017 (without exception)

In an era of growing inequality, long-term unemployment, and widespread low-wage work, the LERA Program Committee seeks proposals offering original and high-quality research related to the theme, Robust Labor Markets and Employment Relationships: Policy and Research for its winter meeting held in conjunction with the Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA). We also welcome proposals on a broad range of other topics, including labor and employment relations, labor market regulation, social insurance, economic justice, technology and work organization, human resource studies, and organizational practices (such as pensions, health insurance, and work-life balance), as well as topics of current interest or related more generally to the mission of LERA. We encourage submissions from multiple academic disciplines and from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, including workers, managers, and unions.

Proposed sessions should include a total of 7 participants with either 1 chair, 3 presenters, and 3 discussants OR 1 chair, 4 presenters, and 2 discussants. The Committee also accepts individual paper proposals, although preference is given to session submissions.

In order to give a paper at a LERA session, presenters must be current in their LERA membership. (Join LERA http://www.LERAweb.org/join-lera.) Proposals that include participants with diverse gender, ethnic, institutional and geographic backgrounds will be favored.

Papers presented in LERA symposia at the 2018 LERA Winter Meeting will be invited to be published in the LERA Proceedings. Visit the LERA website for complete information about our Proceedings and submission requirements.

To submit an online proposal, visit https://lera.memberclicks.net/2018-call-for-proposals-lera-winter-meeting. To give the program committee an understanding of the proposed panel, we request that symposia organizers provide:

• Symposium title
• Brief abstract describing overall theme of the session
• Listing of session participants, their affiliations, their role in the session, and their email addresses
• Paper titles and brief paper abstract for all papers to be presented in the session

Proposals must be submitted or reach the LERA Office no later than March 9, 2017. Contact LERAoffice@illinois.edu with questions.

LERA Program Committee for the LERA 2018 Winter Meeting in Conjunction with ASSA/AEA

Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Co-Chair, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Susan Houseman, Co-Chair, W.E. Upjohn Institute; Katharine Abraham, University of Maryland; Teresa Ghilarducci, The New School for Social Research; Barry T. Hirsch, Georgia State University; Alex Mas, Princeton University; Larry Mishel, Economic Policy Institute; Samuel L. Myers, University of Minnesota; Jesse Rothstein, University of California, Berkeley; Till Von Wachter, UCLA; William Spriggs, AFL-CIO and Howard University; and Sanford Jacoby, Co-Chair, University of California, Los Angeles (ex officio)

21st December 2016

LERA 2017 Winter Meeting

Please join the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) in Chicago for the LERA 2017 Winter Meeting, Jan. 6-8, 2017, held in conjunction with the ASSA/AEA. 

The LERA 2017 Winter Meeting Program Committee, chaired by Sandy Jacoby of UCLA and Jeannette Wicks-Lim of the University of Vermont, brings you 18 sessions on leading topics addressing "Equity and Prosperity: Employment Policy for the 21st Century", including a plenary session and welcome reception on the opening night, which you are invited to attend. 

You can find the complete LERA program and more here:
https://lera.memberclicks.net/2017-lera-winter-meeting-assaaea

6th December 2016

London BUIRA seminar programme 2017 begins Jan 27 on unions and industrial action in Germany and Britain

BRITISH UNIVERSITIES INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ASSOCIATION

Central London BUIRA

Westminster Business School of the University of Westminster

35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (nearest tube Baker Street)

10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

For further details and to reserve a place, please contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

SEMINAR PROGRAMME 2017: Significant changes in labour organisation and employment nationally, in East and West Europe, and globally (see attached):

27 January 2017, Union membership and industrial action in Germany and Britain, Dr Heiner Dribbusch (Institute of Economic and Social Research, WSI, Germany) on Organising through conflict and Professor John Kelly (Birkbeck College) on Do strikes increase trade union membership? Room C419 (lunch C389)

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the impact of industrial action on trade union organising and membership in the contrasting cases of Germany and Britain. Heiner Dribbusch, of Hans-Böckler Stiftung, drawing on his recent paper published in the ETUI journal Transfer, examines strike activity in Germany between 2004 and 2015 in the public and private services sectors, particularly by United Services Union, ver.di, the second largest union. He shows how industrial disputes constitute decisive moments for unions to demonstrate their effectiveness, acting as a catalyst to union building, though not a magic bullet. In contrast, John Kelly from Birkbeck College, based on a 7 year dataset of trade union membership joiners and leavers from a major British trade union and drawing on a paper to be published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, shows how periods of strike action are associated with a significantly higher rate of membership and that new members are motivated by perceived injustice and union effectiveness.

Heiner Dribbusch is senior researcher at the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) within the Hans Böckler Stiftung His research fields cover trade union organising and trends in industrial action in Germany and Europe, wage policy, and trade union policies. His most recent publications include: ‘Trade Unions in Germany: Development, Challenges, Responses’ (with Peter Birke) in: Ingrid Artus et al. (eds.): Developments in German Industrial Relations, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2016, ‘Anti-Unionism in a Coordinated Market Economy: the Case of Germany’ (with Martin Behrens) in Gregor Gall/Tony Dundon (eds.) Global Anti-Unionism. Nature, Dynamics, Trajectories and Outcomes, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013;

John Kelly is Professor of Industrial Relations in the Department of Management at Birkbeck College whose main research interests are comparative employment relations, comparative labour politics and trade unionism. His most recent publications include Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform, Routledge. 2015, and ‘Conflict: trends and forms of collective action’, Employee Relations, 37(6): 1-13, 2015.

LATER LONDON BUIRA SEMINARS INCLUDE:

24 February 2017, Labour and global governance, Dr Frank Hoffer (Bureau for Workers’ Activities, ILO) and Dr Yvonne Rueckert (University of Portsmouth) on Global unions and World Bank and IMF policies, Discussant: Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck College) Room: C279 (lunch C287)

31 March 2017 Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI, Room C279 (lunch C287)

28 April 2017, Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation, with Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship and Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases Room: C279 (lunch C287)

5th December 2016

Labour and Development II: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, 24th Feb, 2017, University of Sussex

Following a very successful event at De Montfort University in June 2016 we are delighted to announce the second workshop in the Subjecting Labour series at the University of Sussex. The series seeks to build interdisciplinary methodological approaches to understanding “labour” as an active subject in development. It brings together Anthropology, Industrial Relations, Geography, and International Political Economy (IPE) and is currently building towards a special issue in a leading journal. 

Anthropologists and geographers have long engaged with ‘agency’ in order to understand how workers negotiate and interpret local economies, spatial conditions and processes of development. Yet, primarily, this has remained focused on the ability of various labouring communities to manoeuvre, shape or re-interpret the confines of global and state structures, shifting economic configurations and development programs or policies. Likewise, labour agency is central to studies of industrial relations, albeit as a 'collective actor' that mobilises institutional means to bargain for better wages and conditions.  However, traditional/institutional industrial relations lack attention to forms of labour that have always existed as a value creator beyond the formal workplace: in households, communities and in the realm of social reproduction, or to the wider concerns and role of labour in society. For scholars in IPE, a discipline founded on understanding the relationship between states and markets, labour has been gaining increasing attention. From contesting firm strategies within global production networks to directly and indirectly influencing the policy decisions of states, labour gained new analytical significance. Yet, as with industrial relations, labour is too often conceptualised as an “interest group”, with this remaining locked either into traditional Marxist dichotomies of class or by situating labour as an institutional actor pursuing gains from a process within which its role is already circumscribed.

The workshop series has developed as a means to rethink definitions, strategies and struggles of labour in production and reproduction.  Labour has, to varying degrees, been an actor in development, in freedom struggles in the Global South and in universal aspirations towards improved quality of life, citizenship rights and other forms of change. Remaining conscious of the ambiguity of defining what ‘labour’ can be seen to incorporate, we seek to rethink the historical and contemporary role of ‘labour’ in impacting development trajectories and discourses.  We seek to build understanding around the relationship between ‘labour’ and (the often messy, contested or contradictory) forms of development that take place at state level and beyond.  We began this process in the first workshop.  However, there were also areas we saw as needing further thought.  Thus we are asking contributors, against the broader background of the workshop program, to consider the following thematic questions:

How to consider forms, methods, and impacts of resistance in terms of labour and development?

How to deal with tensions and contradictions of states playing a ‘progressive’ role vis-à-vis labour?

What is the role of social reproduction, not just in creating forms of exploitation, but as a potential location for new types of resistance?

How might we resituate ‘informal’ labour at the forefront of these issues and deal with the blurred nature of the formal/informal dichotomy?

How might we deal with developing work which considers more affective and emotive engagements with labour, labour markets, labour force control as well as dualistic appeals to alternative visions and forms of organisation beyond ‘formal’ or ‘traditional’ means of mobilising?

Webpage:  https://labouranddevelopment.wordpress.com/

Contact at University of Sussex: Dr Thomas Chambers, tc90@sussex.ac.uk

Organising Committee: Dr Adam Fishwick (DMU, International Political Economy); Dr Thomas Chambers (Sussex, Anthropology); Dr Anita Hammer (DMU, Work and employment relations and Economic Geography)

Advisors: Professor Jonathan Davies (DMU), Dr Geert de Neve (Sussex), Dr Benjamin Selwyn (Sussex)

Other Network Members: Dr Kevin Gray (University of Sussex); Dr Alessandra Mezzadri (SOAS); Dr Fenella Porter (Ruskin College); Brandon Sommers (ISS); Ilias Alami (University of Manchester); Eva Herman (Middlesex University); Dr Matteo Rizzo (SOAS); Dr Nik Hammer (Leicester)

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE

1st December 2016

Labour and Development II: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, 24th Feb, 2017, University of Sussex

Following a very successful event at De Montfort University in June 2016 we are delighted to announce the second workshop in the Subjecting Labour series at the University of Sussex. The series seeks to build interdisciplinary methodological approaches to understanding “labour” as an active subject in development. It brings together Anthropology, Industrial Relations, Geography, and International Political Economy (IPE) and is currently building towards a special issue in a leading journal. 

Anthropologists and geographers have long engaged with ‘agency’ in order to understand how workers negotiate and interpret local economies, spatial conditions and processes of development. Yet, primarily, this has remained focused on the ability of various labouring communities to manoeuvre, shape or re-interpret the confines of global and state structures, shifting economic configurations and development programs or policies. Likewise, labour agency is central to studies of industrial relations, albeit as a 'collective actor' that mobilises institutional means to bargain for better wages and conditions.  However, traditional/institutional industrial relations lack attention to forms of labour that have always existed as a value creator beyond the formal workplace: in households, communities and in the realm of social reproduction, or to the wider concerns and role of labour in society. For scholars in IPE, a discipline founded on understanding the relationship between states and markets, labour has been gaining increasing attention. From contesting firm strategies within global production networks to directly and indirectly influencing the policy decisions of states, labour gained new analytical significance. Yet, as with industrial relations, labour is too often conceptualised as an “interest group”, with this remaining locked either into traditional Marxist dichotomies of class or by situating labour as an institutional actor pursuing gains from a process within which its role is already circumscribed.

The workshop series has developed as a means to rethink definitions, strategies and struggles of labour in production and reproduction.  Labour has, to varying degrees, been an actor in development, in freedom struggles in the Global South and in universal aspirations towards improved quality of life, citizenship rights and other forms of change. Remaining conscious of the ambiguity of defining what ‘labour’ can be seen to incorporate, we seek to rethink the historical and contemporary role of ‘labour’ in impacting development trajectories and discourses.  We seek to build understanding around the relationship between ‘labour’ and (the often messy, contested or contradictory) forms of development that take place at state level and beyond.  We began this process in the first workshop.  However, there were also areas we saw as needing further thought.  Thus we are asking contributors, against the broader background of the workshop program, to consider the following thematic questions:

How to consider forms, methods, and impacts of resistance in terms of labour and development?

How to deal with tensions and contradictions of states playing a ‘progressive’ role vis-à-vis labour?

What is the role of social reproduction, not just in creating forms of exploitation, but as a potential location for new types of resistance?

How might we resituate ‘informal’ labour at the forefront of these issues and deal with the blurred nature of the formal/informal dichotomy?

How might we deal with developing work which considers more affective and emotive engagements with labour, labour markets, labour force control as well as dualistic appeals to alternative visions and forms of organisation beyond ‘formal’ or ‘traditional’ means of mobilising?

Webpage:  https://labouranddevelopment.wordpress.com/

Contact at University of Sussex: Dr Thomas Chambers, tc90@sussex.ac.uk

30th November 2016

ESRC Seminar: Factor Income Distribution, Work and Employment - Social and Economic Perspectives

Call for Participants 

Wednesday 14th December 2016

Venue: Nottingham Trent University

Organisers: Bruce Philp, Gary Slater, Andrew Trigg and Dan Wheatley

The drivers of factor income distribution have tended to be overlooked by mainstream economists and policymakers in favour of a focus on personal income distribution. However, both aspects of income distribution have a renewed salience in the context of current political and economic turmoil.  This is the final seminar in a series that explores factor income distribution from a plurality of perspectives, including heterodox economic approaches, in addition to more mainstream analyses; feminist economics; institutional, sociological and employment studies perspectives. This final session will draw strands of debate and analysis together and look to policy implications.

More information about the series is available on our website: https://factorincomedistribution.wordpress.com. Follow us on Twitter at @factorincomes.

Participants from government, industry and the university sector are invited to attend. PhD students are especially welcome.

Seminar 6: Policy Recommendations 

Programme

10:30-11:00         Registration, Coffee and Pastries 

11.00-11.15         Welcome from Bruce Philp (Birmingham City University) and Daniel Wheatley (University of Birmingham) 

11:15-12:45         Craig Holmes (Pembroke College Oxford)

Technology, inequality and the role of skills policy 

Will Rossiter (Head of Economic Strategy Research Bureau, Nottingham Business School)

Inequality in regional and local economic development strategy and practice 

12:45-13:30         Lunch 

13:30-14:30         Howard Reed (Landman Economics)

The UK wage share, 1948-2015: evidence from aggregate data 

14:30-15:30         Roundtable

Factor Income Distribution, Work and Employment: Policy Recommendations and Series Summary

Led by Bruce Philp (Birmingham City University), Gary Slater (Leeds University Business School),

Andrew Trigg (Open University) and Daniel Wheatley (University of Birmingham)

Some funded travel bursaries will be available for PhD students. Participants are also advised that places at each seminar are limited and so booking is essential.

The event is funded by the ESRC.

For enquiries about travel bursaries, and/or to book a place on the event, please contact Camille Heslop-Martin at ESRC.IncomeDistSeminar@ntu.ac.uk 

Location: DICe Building (Room 109B), Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU (Access from Clarendon Street). 

For directions, travel details and campus map see: http://www4.ntu.ac.uk/about_ntu/document_uploads/189251.pdf

30th November 2016

New BUIRA Administrator

Laura Bambrough has taken over the role of Administrator as Trudi Pemberton has left Newcastle University Business School.

If you have any items to be added to the website/newsletter or any other questions please contact Laura at admin@BUIRA.org.

30th November 2016

Wedderburn Papers, Modern Records Centre, Warwick University

The cataloguing of the Wedderburn Papers is progressing well. See:

 https://warwickmrc.wordpress.com/

 BUIRA members contributed generously (the largest single group of individuals - in numbers and money raised) but the appeal is ongoing as the target was not reached. Anyone wishing to contribute can contact the Modern Records Centre directly or me at: paulsmithblist@hotmail.co.uk

25th November 2016

BUIRA social media and website co-ordinator

BUIRA is looking for a person to develop and run the association’s social media and web presence. This is for 8 hours a week (£20 per hour) for an initial 3-month period, but we anticipate this being extended. This work would be suited to someone who is self-employed.

 The work will entail creating and maintaining a web and social media presence, and will require experience of maintaining websites and social media platforms.  The role will involve working with the BUIRA team and contributors to support the production of content for the web and social media.   It will also require searching and soliciting appropriate material for the website. This could be recent news events relating to employment and industrial relations, reporting on BUIRA members’ activities (reports, research, media activity). It could involve written and visual material (photos, videos etc). The aim is to keep the website interesting and up-to-date such that traffic to the site increases. This will be done in conjunction with the use of social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) to a) direct traffic to the site and b) to create a social media presence for the association such that our profile is raised in the academic world and more widely in the public/media sphere.  A further aspect would be to help promote BUIRA events (seminars/conference) using the website, social media and publicity materials. 

If you wish to express an interest in this consultancy work, we will require a written 2 page A4 document outlining how you feel you can assist BUIRA in creating and maintaining a web and social media presence, and your previous experience (with examples) in social media/website work. The deadline for submission of this is Friday 23rd December 2016.  

For further information please contact Stewart Johnstone stewart.johnstone@ncl.ac.uk.

25th November 2016

Gaining Research Funding Event: November 29: Nottingham

Please share with your networks; early career researchers and PhD students are especially welcome!

A major challenge and opportunity facing Business and Management scholars is securing external funding to support their work and to demonstrate impact.  The Centre for People, Innovation and Performance in combination with the British Academy of Management Building Capacity/ Human Resource Management Special Interest Groups are pleased to invite you to an event entitled: ‘Gaining Research Funding’. The event will draw upon the insights of leading academics who have been successful in attracting research funding. 

The event will take place on November 29, 2016 from 12:30-16:00 and will include lunch and entail presentations and a panel discussion. Please see below details of confirmed speakers.

Presenters

Greg J. Bamber

Professor Greg Bamber is Co-Director of the Australian Consortium for Research in Employment & Work, Monash University, Australia and Visiting Professor, Newcastle University Business School, England. He has won many grants including from: ESRC; Australian Research Council; Bank of England; Foundation for Management Education; International Labour Organization; British Academy; Ford Foundation; Primary Health Care Research Institute; Academy of Social Sciences, Academy of the Humanities; various health services, other institutions and universities. He is a research grant assessor in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada. He has been lead investigator on many grant-funded projects, including on: airlines, hospitals, manufacturing, telecommunications; outsourcing/shared services, dispute settlement; workplace change. He was formerly Director of Research at Durham Business School and at Monash University. He has many publications. They include: International & Comparative Employment Relations: https://study.sagepub.com/bamber; Up in the Air: How Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging their Employees: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu   For more details: www.gregbamber.com

Nelarine Cornelius

Nelarine is Professor in Human Resource Management and Organizational Studies. She is Visiting Professor, University of Paris (10) and Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Lagos. An important strand of her work is the application of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to the study of inequality and fairness in work practices and the governance and social responsibility of organizations: she is one of the few scholars working in this area in the context of work organisations. She is co-led the ESRC funded seminar series (with Professor Miguel Martinez Lucio of the University of Manchester): Ethnicity, networks and voice mechanisms in established and hard to reach BME communities. She has also completed research projects on the development of community policing (with Kent Police); the experience of mentoring and identity (with Professor Eric Pezet, Paris 10) and organizations and democracy (with Miguel Martinez Lucio and Eric Pezet); social enterprise practices (with Dr. James Wallace (Bradford) and management practices in emerging economies (with James Wallace, Eric Pezet; Olusoji George, University of Lagos, and Ashiq Ali Jhatial, Sindh University Pakistan). She is also undertaking work on new insights into equality, diversity and inclusion with a variety of colleagues internationally.

David Knights 

Professor David Knights is at the Department of Organization, Work and Technology, Lancaster University Management School. His research interests are broad within the area of work and organization studies including gender, technology, higher education and the financial sector. Current research has been related to academics in business schools, the global financial crisis, the body and embodiment and most recently, veterinary surgeons. He jointly created and continues to edit Gender, Work, and Organization and has published several books and international refereed journal articles. He has secured numerous research grants the latest of which are concerned with the study of veterinary surgeons.

Chair

Helen Shipton is Professor of Human Resource Management and Director of the Centre of People, Innovation and Performance at Nottingham Business School.  A member of the British Academy of Management Council and of the Steering Committee of the HRM Special Interest Group, Helen’s research interests centre on HRM, creativity and innovation, having recently co-edited with Budhwar, Sparrow and Brown a book entitled Human Resource Management, Innovation and Performance.  Helen has gained funding from the ESRC (seminar series & case studentship) and has been on the organizing team for a successful knowledge transfer partnership bid focused on innovation within legal services.

PLEASE NOTE: Delegates are invited to send through one or two questions in advance of the event (to the organizing team, as below) if they wish, at the latest by 5.00pm Friday 25thth November.  The questions where possible will be answered during the event, especially in the panel session.  

Objectives

To gain insights from academics who have been successful in winning funding in the area of business and management

To provide support and guidance to delegates as to the opportunities and pitfalls associated with particular funding sources

To have the opportunity to raise specific questions with the presenters, especially in the panel session.  

There is no charge for the event, which is sponsored both by the Centre of People, Innovation and Performance and BAM. Registration is required through the BAM office (omihut@bam.ac.uk).  Please note that spaces are strictly limited and registrations, offered on a first-come first served basis, need to be received by Friday 25th November.

Please register for this event HERE: https://www.bam.ac.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=3215

Note -Non-BAM Members

Please follow the steps below: 

1. Create a Non-BAM Member Account at Stay Informed.

2. Complete your registration by emailing Oana at omihut@bam.ac.uk or calling the BAM office on 020 7383 7770.

If you are not a BAM member and would like to join BAM or find out more about the benefits of being a BAM member, please go to BAM BAM membership.

Organising team

Oana Mihut from the BAM office is dealing with registrations for the event (omihut@bam.ac.uk). Ashley Purcell, Administrator for the Centre of People, Innovation and Performance, Nottingham Business School, will receive your advance questions (as requested above)/ general queries about the event and its location etc.  Ashley.Purcell@ntu.ac.uk

Cheers!

GREG BAMBER

https://business.monash.edu/management/research/research-groups/acrew/our-people

Monash Business School, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria 3145, Australia 

E: GregBamber@Gmail.Com, greg_bamber@yahoo.com.au

24th November 2016

Scottish Labour History journal – call for proposals for papers for 2017 edition

 Of the many important centenaries that have abounded in the early part of our new millennium, for the study of labour history none is more important than that of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. It was a world historic turning point. For the first time anywhere under capitalism, workers made a successful bid for power, seeking to reshape society in their own image. We are all well aware of the unfolding events following the revolution, be they the civil war, the Stalinization of Soviet Russia, and the impact on revolutionary and working class movements throughout the world. These events gave rise to, and testify to, the divergence of thought and belief on what constitutes socialism and communism, representing a second major division in what had previously been a largely united international socialist movement. Such divisions have been keenly played out within the study of labour history.

Scottish Labour History, the annual journal of the Scottish Labour History Society and now in its 51st year, will mark the centenary of the October Revolution with its 2017 edition, organized on the theme of ‘The October Revolution and its legacy’.

To this end, we wish to make a call for submissions to this journal on the broad themes of the impact and influence of the October Revolution on the labour, trade union and working class movements in Scotland and the British Isles. What we have in mind are most obviously articles on how these existing movements were affected by, and developed in the light of, the October Revolution. We are also interested in submissions on how these movements sought to interpret, utilize and respond to the October Revolution. In doing so, Scottish Labour History seeks submissions which do not merely look at the ‘external’ impact of the October Revolution upon these shores, but also how domestic dynamics conditioned the response to the external development represented by the October Revolution. So we are keen to see submissions which either bring to the table new historical research on these matters or examine the state of our knowledge and understanding of these processes and outcomes.

(NB Scottish Labour History will also publish papers in its 2017 edition which are not related to this special call for papers. Therefore, any other submissions will also be considered.)

Scottish Labour History publishes paper of between 8,000-10,000 words and research notes of between 4,000-6,000 words. We are calling for abstracts of 500 words for either full papers or research notes on the theme of ‘The October Revolution and its legacy’.

Please send them to the co-editors, either Professor Gregor Gall (g.gall@bradford.ac.uk) or Dr Jim Phillips (James.Phillips@glasgow.ac.uk) by 1 March 2017 at the latest. 

22nd November 2016

ESRC Seminar Series: Migrants, Workplace and Community: Learning from Innovation in Civil Society

Migrant Worker Initiatives and Established Labour Organisations

Organisers: Stefania Marino, Miguel Martínez Lucio and Stephen Mustchin

 The question of trade unions and their responses to migration has become a central feature of the study of labour and employment relations and the sociology of work more generally. Recent research has engaged with the different ways trade unions have responded to the challenges facing migrant workers in a more precarious working environment and the way in which the broader body of regulation and rights can be sustained and enhanced. Trade unions respond in a variety of ways and attitudes and policies have varied greatly over time and according to the specific context. In recent years, there has been an emerging consensus regarding the need for a greater sensibility to issues of race and social exclusion.

 In the current context, there is a growing awareness that the climate of growing xenophobia and the limited reach of trade unions have brought a new set of challenges to migrant communities and trade unions. In some cases, these challenges have generated new forms of worker organisation, e.g. new forms of independent models of representation and action within and beyond the main remit of traditional associations. Furthermore, the question of ‘Brexit’ and the emergence of a more ambivalent approach to migration issues in some trade union communications suggest a new set of challenges to the hopes of social inclusion and equality.

 The Seminars will have speakers discussing developments in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It will also have speakers discussing the new forms of worker organisations that are emerging and the problems presented by the current political and social climate. Details of the sessions will be announced soon. The main speakers and discussants will be Gabriella Alberti, Heather Connolly, Zita Holbourne, Stefania Marino, Miguel Martinez Lucio, Stephen Mustchin, Davide Pero, Judith Roosblad, Mohammed Taj and Michael Whittall.

 Venue: Alliance Manchester Business School, Dover Street Building, room 1.037

Date: 25th November

Time: 9.30-4.30pm

Registration Event Brite http://esrc_seminar_series.eventbrite.co.uk

Programme:

 9.30               Welcome- Davide Pero’, Nottingham University Business School

Introduction- Stefania Marino, Miguel Martinez Lucio, Stephen Mustchin, University of Manchester

 10.00 - 11.15   Trade unions and labour migration in North-West Europe

‘The "Schatten" side of labour Migration in German – trade union responses to precarious employment practices’ - Michael Whittall, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

‘Trade unions and migrant workers in the Netherlands’- Judith Roosblad, University of Amsterdam

 11.15-11.40   Tea and Coffee

 11.40-1.30    Trade unions and labour migration in the UK: Recent developments and dilemmas

‘A pattern of restriction of social and mobility rights for EU migrants in the UK? Implications for labour relations’- Gabriella Alberti, University of Leeds

‘Trade union responses to migration in the UK: past lessons and future challenges’- Heather Connolly, De Montfort University

Davide Pero’, University of Nottingham

 1.30-2.30        Lunch

 2.30-4.30         Roundtable: Where do trade unions go from here? Questions of racism and xenophobia

Zita Holbourne, BARAC & PCS

Mohammed Taj, Unite and Former President of TUC

Discussant and chair Stephen Mustchin, University of Manchester

17th November 2016

New Book by Caroline Lloyd and Jonathan Payne

Skills in the Age of Over-Qualification: Comparing Service Sector Work in Europe

Many national governments have emphasised the role of skills in achieving international competitiveness, higher living standards, and social inclusion. However, even prior to the 2008 financial crisis, problems of over-qualification, skills wastage, and poor job quality were becoming difficult to ignore. In their new book, Skills in the Age of Over-Qualification, Caroline Lloyd, Cardiff University and Jonathan Payne, De Montfort University ask what can be done to make better use of skills that workers already have, and to improve the quality of jobs and services.

Through cross-national comparative research, this book examines whether and why service sector jobs vary across countries. Drawing upon detailed empirical research, the jobs of vocational teacher, fitness instructor, and café worker in the UK, Norway, and France are compared, allowing an exploration of the role of national institutions, sectors, and organisations in shaping work organisation and job quality. The findings contribute to the comparative study of work organisation, the relationship between skills and performance, the role and purpose of education and the prospects for better jobs in ‘the age of over-qualification’.

Skills in the Age of Over-Qualification: Comparing Service Sector Work in Europe is published by Oxford University Press.

Published October 2016: 288 pages, HB ISBN: 9780199672356 £55

Available for £38.50 with online discount when you order directly via www.oup.com/academic/business, adding promotion code ASFLY Q6. Discount valid until 31/12/2016. Also available as an EBook.

17th November 2016

WERU Seminar at Greenwich on 30 November: Change of venue

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES
 
NEW SKILLS FOR A SKILLED ECONOMY? THE POST-BREXIT OUTLOOK
 
WEDNESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2016. ROOM QA175. QUEEN ANNE COURT, OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE.  15.00 – 18.00
 
This seminar will cover the crisis in skills formation in the UK economy. It features four expert speakers who will speak about the current skills shortages facing the UK labour market and Government policies aimed to remedy them. Our speakers include Professor Ken Mayhew (University of Oxford and ex-economic director of the UK’s NEDC); Dr Patrick McGurk and Richard Meredith (University of Greenwich) and Sue Fearns (Prospect – the trade union representing professional staff in the civil service and energy industry). 

 Ken Mayhew (University of Oxford). Alternative Pathways into the Labour Market in the UK.  Ken will argue that the current configuration of pathways into the labour market is massively sub-optimal.  The consequence is that there is widespread under-utilisation of skills and capabilities together with harmful distributional consequences.  He will go on to consider how policy makers might address the problems. Ken Mayhew is Emeritus Professor of Education and Economic Performance at Oxford University, Emeritus Fellow in Economics at Pembroke College Oxford and Honorary Professor of Education and Economic Performance at Maastricht University.  Currently he is a member of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.   He was Founding Director of SKOPE, an ESRC-funded multidisciplinary research centre on skills, knowledge and organisational performance.  Outside academia he served as Economic Director of the UK’s former National Economic Development Office.  Mayhew has published widely on labour economics, human resource management, the economics of education and policy analysis.  He is an editor of Oxford Economic Papers and The Oxford Review of Economic Policy. 

 Richard Meredith and Dr Patrick McGurk (University of Greenwich) Patrick and Richard’s paper will investigate the responsibilities and membership of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England to assess the prospects for devolution of employment and skills policy. The paper argues that LEPs represent a fresh, market-driven attempt by government to alter the institutional framework for meeting local labour market needs through devolved, business-led bodies. However, the paper also shows that while LEPs assume devolved powers, their structure, resourcing and leadership are poorly aligned for the engagement of local employers. It is therefore argued that the prospects for effective devolution in the area of employment and skills are weak. Rather, it is argued, government employment and skills programmes are set to be dominated by a centralised contracting regime involving large private sector agents. Richard Meredith is a MPhil/PhD student and part-time lecturer within the Work and Employment Relations Unit at the University of Greenwich.   His research interest is employers’ motives for recruiting the long term unemployed, particularly in the case of the UK.    He has 23 years public sector experience (including the UK Public Employment Service) and 13 years industry experience in Employer Intermediary Services (including Business Link and Train to Gain). Dr Patrick McGurk is currently the Head of Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour at the University Of Greenwich Faculty Of Business. Patrick worked for several years in further and management education in the UK and Germany before joining the University of Greenwich in 2006. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics in 2011. Patrick has researched and published on leadership and management in the public services and on government employment and skills policy. He is co-editor of a forthcoming Special Issue of the Human Resource Management Journal on employer engagement with government initiatives for vulnerable labour market groups, and co-author of a recently commissioned report on English apprenticeships for the Institute of Construction Economics at Michigan State University.

 Sue Fearns (Prospect) will cover three main issues: STEM skills – the current position and the post-Brexit outlook; skills and professional development in the civil service; and skills and the ‘productivity puzzle’. Sue will also reflect on the role of Prospect as a trade union representing highly skilled professionals within the UK labour market. Sue Fearns is Deputy General Secretary at Prospect, the union for professionals. Her responsibilities in Prospect include leading the union’s work on equal opportunities; legal services; skills; campaigning and communications; and on science, engineering and sustainability.  She is a member of the TUC General Council and Executive Committee, and is a board member of unionlearn, deputy chair of the Women’s Committee and a TUC Aid Trustee. She has been an active member of the Trade Union Sustainable Development Advisory Committee since its inception, and is the General Council’s lead on environment and sustainability. Sue is also Chair of Unions 21. Unions 21 provides an ‘open space’ for discussion on the future of the trade union movement and the world of work, helping to shape unions since 1993 by providing evidence, advice, new thinking and networks.She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and a trustee of the Science Council.

 This is an open seminar and all are invited but please can you inform us if you are planning to attend from outside the University of Greenwich by contacting myself, Professor Geoff White, on wg08@gre.ac.uk.
 
HOW TO FIND US
 http://www2.gre.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/465729/Greenwich.pdf

17th November 2016

BUIRA Conference 2017- Call for papers

The Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers

 University of Portsmouth, Weds 28th – Fri 30th June 2017

Call for papers now open – until 3rd February 2017

The theme of BUIRA 2017 is the Changing Face of Industrial Relations: New Borders, New Frontiers. The conference will take place a little over a year after a referendum which resulted in a narrow vote in favour of the UK leaving the European Union (EU). Therefore it will provide an ideal opportunity for participants not only to explore and discuss the future of industrial relations in the UK outside of the EU, but also to consider the portents for industrial relations in Europe and around the world in general. New borders may be springing up, and existing borders hardening, but the frontiers of industrial relations continue to be pushed back, and extended, in some notable ways.

Linked to the rise of right-wing populist politics in many parts of Europe, borders between countries have hardened. To what extent, and in what ways, is it now appropriate to contemplate the implications of further European disintegration for industrial relations, rather than integration? 2017 marks the tenth anniversary of the financial crisis. How far has industrial relations been transformed in Europe under conditions of austerity? To what extent do the ‘European social model’ and the EU’s ‘social dimension’ offer an alternative to a neo-liberal paradigm that has been responsible for a dearth of high quality jobs?

To a large extent, the UK vote to leave the EU reflected discontent about stagnant living standards, growing labour commodification, and the adverse consequences of austerity, which many people, influenced by a partisan media, blamed on EU migration. We have seen the rise of irregular working arrangements (including zero-hour contracts), precarious employment, and bogus self-employment, often associated with the rise of the ‘gig economy’. Yet unions and civil society organizations have made considerable efforts to represent, organize and mobilize workers at the sharp end of labour market change. Workers in the ‘gig economy’ are prepared to challenge employers, often in resourceful and imaginative ways, highlighting the continued relevance of labour conflict. What are the prospects for re-regulating industrial relations, and how does re-regulation manifest itself? In the UK, Theresa May’s government has talked about doing more to reduce inequality, putting workers’ representatives on company boards, and tackling abusive working practices.

Yet this coexists with the recently enacted Trade Union Act 2016 which imposes significant additional restrictions on unions. What, then, is the significance of governmental efforts to re-regulate relations? What are the main trends in respect of multi-level regulation? What is the future of supranational regulation in a clearly ailing EU? And how can we better understand global labour governance arrangements?

In discussing questions like these, participants at BUIRA 2017 will play a key part in exploring the changing face of industrial relations. The frontiers of industrial relations as a field of study continue to expand, providing crucial insights into work, employment, and employment relations in twenty-first century societies. We look forward to receiving submissions that reflect this. Although we welcome papers that concern any area of industrial relations, papers concerning topics under the following three headings will be particularly welcome: 

The changing face of industrial relations: a decade of austerity - the crisis and industrial relations in Europe, 2007-17; public sector industrial relations in a time of austerity; managing industrial relations in a financialized, market economy; ‘commodified’ labour – irregular work, precarious employment and bogus self-employment; the changing nature of work and employment; jobs, skills and the quality of work in the low-pay economy; the impact of the National Living Wage; social class, equality and diversity in industrial relations.

New borders in industrial relations: the prospects of European (dis)integration for industrial relations; the politics of the European social model; labour mobility and migrant workers; re-regulating industrial relations – at national, sub-national and supra-national level; devolved government and industrial relations; global labour governance arrangements; the activities of labour movements across national borders

New frontiers in industrial relations: digitalization and digital labour – implications for work, workers, and societies; working, managing and organizing in the ‘gig economy’; new, neglected and emerging actors in employment relations; new and emerging manifestations of labour conflict.

Empirical (both quantitative and qualitative), analytical, conceptual and methodological papers are all welcome. We would particularly appreciate submissions from early career researchers and doctoral students.

Submission details

Abstracts of papers should be submitted by email to: admin@buira.org

Abstracts should be a maximum of 500 words in length and cover the following headings:

Brief outline

Methodology

Key findings

References

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 3rd February 2017.

Abstracts are refereed anonymously by BUIRA Executive Committee members.

Decisions will be notified by late March 2017.

17th November 2016

New BUIRA PhD Network Organisers

At the PhD Symposium last week, Danat Valizade and Ralph Darlington stepped down as BUIRA PhD Network Organisers and handed over responsibility to Maisie Aufderhorst-Roberts and Calum Carson.

Heartfelt thanks to Danat and Ralph for all the hard work and commitment, and a very warm welcome to Maisie and Calum!

17th November 2016

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

The Relevance of Trade Unionism for Today

Speaker: Dave Ward

General Secretary, Communication Workers Union

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 8 December 6pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

The UK economy is fundamentally broken. Workers in this country have rarely been under so much pressure to work harder and faster for less, six million people earn less than a living wage and millions are trapped in insecure employment. At the same time, the basic things we’ve taken for granted like the right to a decent home are out of reach for many.

Trade unions are hugely important in this context and the labour movement as a whole has to respond. Industrially we have seen workers in companies like Sports Direct, Uber and Deliveroo fighting back – but we also have to respond politically if we are going to defeat the populist right.

With trade union density in decline, and a majority Conservative government, the challenge on both these fronts is huge. So the union movement has got to adapt - we’ve got to get organised and we’ve got to mobilise our membership behind a New Deal for Workers. I will be setting out the case for how to do so. 

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

14th November 2016

Central London BUIRA

Westminster Business School of the University of Westminster

35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (nearest tube Baker Street)

10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

For further details and to reserve a place, please contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)

SEMINAR PROGRAMME 2017: Significant changes in labour organisation and employment nationally, in East and West Europe, and globally (see attached and below):

27 January 2017, Union membership and industrial action in Germany and Britain, Dr Heiner Dribbusch (Institute of Economic and Social Research, WSI, Germany) on Organising through conflict and Professor John Kelly (Birkbeck College) on Do strikes increase trade union membership? Room C419 (lunch C389)

This regular monthly seminar is focussed on the impact of industrial action on trade union organising and membership in the contrasting cases of Germany and Britain. Heiner Dribbusch, of Hans-Böckler Stiftung, drawing on his recent paper published in the ETUI journal Transfer, examines strike activity in Germany between 2004 and 2015 in the public and private services sectors, particularly by United Services Union, ver.di, the second largest union. He shows how industrial disputes constitute decisive moments for unions to demonstrate their effectiveness, acting as a catalyst to union building, though not a magic bullet. In contrast, John Kelly from Birkbeck College, based on a 7 year dataset of trade union membership joiners and leavers from a major British trade union and drawing on a paper to be published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, shows how periods of strike action are associated with a significantly higher rate of membership and that new members are motivated by perceived injustice and union effectiveness.

Heiner Dribbusch is senior researcher at the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) within the Hans Böckler Stiftung His research fields cover trade union organising and trends in industrial action in Germany and Europe, wage policy, and trade union policies. His most recent publications include: ‘Trade Unions in Germany: Development, Challenges, Responses’ (with Peter Birke) in: Ingrid Artus et al. (eds.): Developments in German Industrial Relations, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2016, ‘Anti-Unionism in a Coordinated Market Economy: the Case of Germany’ (with Martin Behrens) in Gregor Gall/Tony Dundon (eds.) Global Anti-Unionism. Nature, Dynamics, Trajectories and Outcomes, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013;

John Kelly is Professor of Industrial Relations in the Department of Management at Birkbeck College whose main research interests are comparative employment relations, comparative labour politics and trade unionism. His most recent publications include Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform, Routledge. 2015, and ‘Conflict: trends and forms of collective action’, Employee Relations, 37(6): 1-13, 2015.

LATER LONDON BUIRA SEMINARS INCLUDE:

24 February 2017, Labour and global governance, Dr Frank Hoffer (Bureau for Workers’ Activities, ILO) tbc and Dr Yvonne Rueckert (University of Portsmouth) on Global unions and World Bank and IMF policies, Room: C279 (lunch C287)

31 March 2017 Transforming labour in Central and Eastern Europe:

Europeanisation, dependant capitalism, labour weakening and awakening

Dr Violaine Delteil (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Dr Vassil Kirov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Université d'Evry, and ETUI, Room C279 (lunch C287)

28 April 2017, Changing employment status and new forms of work organisation, with Dr Jan Drahoukoupil (ETUI) on The Platform Economy and the Disruption of the Employment Relationship and Annie Powell (Leigh Day Law Firm) on The fight for workers’ rights in the digital economy: Uber and other cases Room: C279 (lunch C287)

4th November 2016

4th BUIRA PhD Symposium

10-11 November 2016

University of Leeds, United Kingdom

PROGRAMME

Day 1, 10 November 2016

Venue: Blenheim Terrace, SR G.02 House No. 11-14, University of Leeds

Room information and directions:

http://students.leeds.ac.uk/site/custom_scripts/ajax_loader.php?type=room&id=99841

10.00-11.00 Registration

11.00-11.15 Opening and welcome

11.15-13.00 BUIRA Academic Debate: ‘Workplace partnership: A genuine high-road strategy or a chimera in disguise?’

Peter Ackers - Professor of Employment Relations, De Montfort University

Mark Stuart – Montague Burton Professor of Human Resource Management and

Employment Relations, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds

13.00-14.00 Lunch

Venue: Blenheim Terrace, SR G.12 House No. 11-14

14.00-15.30 Session 1

Venue: Blenheim Terrace, SR G.15 House No. 11-14

Discussant: Dr Vera Trappmann (University of Leeds)

The future(s) of New Zealand trade unions?

Carol Jess (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

Breakaway trade unions: A political economy approach

David Evans (University of Strathclyde)

Unravelling the conundrum of contingent workers’ attitudes towards trade unions

Danat Valizade (University of Leeds)

15.30-15.45 Comfort break

15.45-17.15 Session 2

Venue: Blenheim Terrace, SR G.15 House No. 11-14

Discussant: Dr Hugh Cook (University of Leeds)

Methodology, positionality, ethics and reflexivity in relation to a case-study of offshoring

Sylvia Courtnage (London Metropolitan University)

Women, work and Inner East London’s digital and creative cluster – what do we know?

Carole Williams (London Metropolitan University)

Meaningful work in public health services

Pauline Davis (Anglia Ruskin University)

18.30-21.30 Symposium Dinner

Bill’s Restaurant Leeds

1 Albion Place, Leeds

LS1 6JL

0113 245 2010

https://bills-website.co.uk/restaurants/leeds/

Day 2, 11 November 2016

Venue: Baines Wing SR 1.16, University of Leeds

Room information and directions:

http://students.leeds.ac.uk/site/custom_scripts/ajax_loader.php?type=room&id=99822

10.00-11.15 Building impact into your research

Dr Jo Cutter, Research Engagement Manager, University of Leeds

11.15-11.30 Comfort break

11.30-12.30 Session 3

Discussant: Professor Andy Charlwood (University of Leeds)

A ‘new actor’ and ‘voluntary regulator’ of the employment relationship? A comprehensive investigation of UK employer forums

Philippe Demougin (Cardiff University)

Institutional and firm responses to the changing nature of apprenticeships in England and Germany

Maisie Aufderhorst-Roberts (University of Leeds)

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.30 Session 4

Discussant: TBA

Perceptions of comparable worth in UK academic institutions

Camille Heslop-Martin (Nottingham Trent University)

Inquiry into front-line experiences of voluntary and community sector employees

Natasha Choudary (London Metropolitan University)

14.30-15.30 The future of BUIRA: Industrial or employment relations?

BUIRA PhD Network Meeting

15.30-15.45 Closing remarks

-End of Programme

Organisers’ Contact Details

Danat Valizade

Lecturer in Quantitative Methods, Leeds University Business School

D.Valizade@leeds.ac.uk ; +44 (0)77 41153300

Maisie Aufderhorst-Roberts

Doctoral student, Leeds University Business School

jl08mfr@leeds.ac.uk

Ralph Buiser

Doctoral Fellow, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences

BuiserRJ@cardiff.ac.uk

Accommodation in Leeds:

Leeds has a wealth of hotels, B&B’s and hostels. Some of the recommended options are as follows:

Ibis Leeds Centre

Travelodge Leeds Centre

Discovery Inn Leeds

Air BnB is of course another option

University of Leeds provides short-term accommodation for £44 per night. The residence is located on campus, nearby the Symposium venues. Further details can be found here:

http://accommodation.leeds.ac.uk/info/200128/staff_accommodation/39/hotels_and_bed_and_breakfasts

Transportation

The University of Leeds, marked by its famous Parkinson building, is located in Leeds city centre, within a reasonable distance from the train station. More information about transportation to and from the university, including an interactive campus map, can be found here:

https://www.leeds.ac.uk/info/5000/about/131/find_us

Bus No1 departs from the train station and stops at Parkinson steps. Taxis in Leeds are not terribly expensive, with Uber being the cheapest option. You can also rely on local taxi companies, particularly Amber (0113 2022117).

4th November 2016

‘Supply Chain Capitalism’, Parcel Delivery Workers and the Degradation of Work: Kirsty Newsome and Sian Moore

University of Leicester, School of Business

Wednesday 16 November

15.30-17.00, Ken Edwards Lecture Theatre 2

The escalation of consumption through e-retailing has increased the demand for home delivery services. The ‘immediate gratification’ of consumer demands is built upon the crucial transformation of the once relatively hidden domain of logistics, distribution and parcel delivery. This necessary ‘revolution’ of the logistics function predicated upon pressures from retailers, is dedicated to securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery and provision. The logistics revolution, concurrent with ‘supply chain capitalism’ (Tsing 2009) has coordinated the movement of products through the supply chain, thereby creating the crucial infrastructure for contemporary capitalism (Cowen 2014). 

 Whilst there are signs of a growing interest and media attention in the logistics workers within global value chains, to date little attention has been focused on the degradation of work for parcel delivery workers, at the end of the supply chain. This seminar will explore qualitative research data from a British Academy funded project exploring work and employment in the UK Parcel Delivery sector. In theoretical terms the paper will seek to contribute to growing debates concerned with the ‘labour of movement’ within the circuit of capital, as well as contributing to an understanding of the last-mile of delivery within wider production networks.

Dr. Kirsty Newsome is Reader in Employment Relations at the University of Sheffield Management School. She leads the Global Value Chain and the Labour Process research theme within the Work, Employment Relations Research Centre (WOERRC) at Sheffield. Her research interests are focused around three interconnected core themes: the changing character of employment regulation; the shifts and transformations in the politics of production; and the dynamic interplay of global value chains and the labour process.  Kirsty’s current research focus is to explore changing work and employment within the logistics sector.

Sian Moore is Professor of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management and Director of the Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU) at the University of Greenwich. Her research centres on the relationship between gender and class, consciousness and activism. She has also published on statutory trade union recognition and trade union learning, equality reps and the British Airways dispute 2009-11. Her current research focus is work and employment in the logistics sector.

2nd November 2016

Call for Papers: European Journal of Industrial Relations

Special Issue: Board-level Employee Representation --- Its Impact and Future

Guest Co-Editors: Michael Gold, Royal Holloway University of London; Chris Rees, Royal Holloway University of London and Jeremy Waddington, University of Manchester

Recent work on employee participation published in English-language journals has centred on its effectiveness in improving organizational performance as well as on specific forms like direct employee involvement, consultation and trends in collective bargaining. Yet all these forms focus on day-to-day workplace issues, involving the implementation and monitoring of policies decided at higher organizational levels. Such analysis has generally neglected the ways in which employee representatives can influence earlier stages of strategic corporate decision-making.

This special issue will aim to fill this gap, by addressing the role of board-level employee representation (BLER), a topic that lies at the intersection of the literature on employee participation and corporate governance. 

We invite prospective authors to submit an abstract on some aspect of board-level employee participation and its operation in Europe. This abstract should be roughly 1,000 words long, and contain a title, key references, methods, main findings and conclusions. Please submit it to the editor [r.hyman@lse.ac.uk], copied to the guest co-editors [M.Gold@rhul.ac.uk; Chris.Rees@rhul.ac.uk; jeremy.waddington@virgin.net], by 31 March 2017.

The themes we aim to cover include:

·         The history and origins of BLER across Europe, and changes to its current structure and functioning, following the 2008 global financial crisis.

·         The degree of influence that board-level employee representatives are able to exert, such as analyses of power relationships on the board.

·         The question of incorporation, that is, the extent to which employee representatives retain or lose their independence through coming to identify with shareholder perspectives.

·         The strength of the links between board-level employee representatives and their union and works council structures (‘articulation’).

·         Gender issues and the role of women as board-level employee representatives.

·         Policy debates and outcomes in countries, including Belgium, Italy and the UK amongst others, that do not provide for BLER.

·         The role of BLER in the ‘sustainable company’, and its influence on corporate performance with respect to environmental and social matters.

·         The relationship between BLER as a form of employee participation and the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and we welcome any abstracts within this general brief.

31st October 2016

Manchester Industrial Relations Society

Joint Meeting with the CIPD

Employee Engagement: A Path to Organisational Success?

Speaker: Professor David Guest

Professor of Organisational Psychology and HRM, School of Management and Business, King’s College, London

http://www.mirs.org.uk/index.html

Thursday 17 November 6pm
Lecture Theatre LT33, Ground Floor
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH
Map:  http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/

How do we evaluate the success of innovations in employment relations? Employee engagement is one of the relatively small number of innovations in employment relations over the past decade that has excited employers and academics as well as national policy-makers. It has created something of a bandwagon, reflected in the Engage for Success movement among employers and the many research studies reported by academics. Yet it is a concept that has been difficult to define, its impact is often unclear and employers and academics view it rather differently.

This presentation will outline criteria for successful employment relations innovations, including whether they enhance performance, well-being, voice and trust, and test employee engagement against these.  In the light of this analysis, an integrated approach to employee engagement will be presented that seeks to enhance the chances of positive outcomes. This presentation will therefore start from a critical perspective and move towards a strategy for effective engagement.

For further details of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society please  contact:

Professor Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT

Phone: 0161-295-5456; email: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Manchester Industrial Relations Society website: www.mirs.org.uk

Twitter: @ManchesterIRS

31st October 2016

Journal of Industrial Relations – Special issue on ‘Migration and Work’

The relationship between migration and work has been transformed in recent decades, most notably through growth of temporary and employer-sponsored visa schemes, the introduction and expansion of cross-border labour mobility zones, and geographical shifts in the main sources and destinations of migration. These changes have produced major challenges for governments, business and labour to balance the perceived disruptive impacts of labour migration with the potential benefits.

The Journal of Industrial Relations (JIR) is publishing a special issue on ‘Migration and Work’ in 2019. Potential contributors are strongly encouraged to present their research at one of the symposia that will be organised to provide feedback and assist in the paper development process prior to submission. The first of these symposia will be held in Sydney in February hosted by the University of Sydney Business School’s Migrants@Work Research Group. We expect that a second symposium will take place in Europe in July 2017 (TBC).

The deadline for online submission of papers to the special issue is 1 October 2017.

Full details regarding the Journal of Industrial Relations special issue is available at: 

http://jir.sagepub.com/site/includefiles/JIR_SI.CfP_Migration%20and%20Work.pdf

Questions related to the content and logistics of the symposium should be directed to the organisers, Dr Stephen Clibborn (stephen.clibborn@sydney.edu.au) and Dr Chris F Wright (chris.f.wright@sydney.edu.au). 

28th October 2016

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH UNIT SEMINAR SERIES

NEW SKILLS FOR A SKILLED ECONOMY: THE POST-BREXIT OUTLOOK

WEDNESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2016. ROOM 102 HAMILTON HOUSE. 15.00 – 18.00

This seminar will cover the crisis in skills formation in the UK economy and the potential impact of Brexit. It features three expert speakers who will speak about the current skills shortages facing the UK labour market, the Government policies aimed to remedy them and the situation post-Brexit. Our speakers include Professor Ken Mayhew (University of Oxford and ex-economic director of the UK’s NEDC); Richard Meredith (University of Greenwich and previously employed in both the public employment service and private intermediary services) and Sue Fearns (Prospect – the trade union representing professional staff in the civil service and energy industry). 

Ken Mayhew (University of Oxford). Alternative Pathways into the Labour Market in the UK.  Ken will argue that the current configuration of pathways into the labour market is massively sub-optimal.  The consequence is that there is widespread under-utilisation of skills and capabilities together with harmful distributional consequences.  He will go on to consider how policy makers might address the problems.

Ken Mayhew is Emeritus Professor of Education and Economic Performance at Oxford University, Emeritus Fellow in Economics at Pembroke College Oxford and Honorary Professor of Education and Economic Performance at Maastricht University.  Currently he is a member of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.   He was Founding Director of SKOPE, an ESRC-funded multidisciplinary research centre on skills, knowledge and organisational performance.  Outside academia he served as Economic Director of the UK’s former National Economic Development Office.  Mayhew has published widely on labour economics, human resource management, the economics of education and policy analysis.  He is an editor of Oxford Economic Papers and The Oxford Review of Economic Policy. 

Richard Meredith (University of Greenwich) Local Enterprise Partnerships. Richard’s paper will investigate the responsibilities and membership of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England to assess the prospects for devolution of employment and skills policy. The paper argues that LEPs represent a fresh, market-driven attempt by government to alter the institutional framework for meeting local labour market needs through devolved, business-led bodies. However, the paper also shows that while LEPs assume devolved powers, their structure, resourcing and leadership are poorly aligned for the engagement of local employers. It is therefore argued that the prospects for effective devolution in the area of employment and skills are weak. Rather, it is argued, government employment and skills programmes are set to be dominated by a centralised contracting regime involving large private sector agents.

Richard Meredith is an MPhil/PhD student and part-time lecturer within the Work and Employment Relations Unit at the University of Greenwich.   His research interest is employers’ motives for recruiting the long term unemployed, particularly in the case of the UK.    He has 23 years public sector experience (including the UK Public Employment Service) and 13 years industry experience in Employer Intermediary Services (including Business Link and Train to Gain).

Sue Fearns (Prospect) Professional skills and the union perspective. Sue will cover three main issues in her talk: STEM skills – the current position and the post-Brexit outlook; skills and professional development in the civil service; and skills and the ‘productivity puzzle’. Sue will also reflect on the role of Prospect as a trade union representing highly skilled professionals within the UK labour market.

Sue Fearns is Deputy General Secretary at Prospect, the union for professionals. Her responsibilities in Prospect include leading the union’s work on equal opportunities; legal services; skills; campaigning and communications; and on science, engineering and sustainability.  She is a member of the TUC General Council and Executive Committee, and is a board member of unionlearn, deputy chair of the Women’s Committee and a TUC Aid Trustee. She has been an active member of the Trade Union Sustainable Development Advisory Committee since its inception, and is the General Council’s lead on environment and sustainability. Sue is also Chair of Unions 21. Unions 21 provides an ‘open space’ for discussion on the future of the trade union movement and the world of work, helping to shape unions since 1993 by providing evidence, advice, new thinking and networks.She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and a trustee of the Science Council.

This is an open seminar and all are invited but please can you inform us if you are planning to attend from outside the University of Greenwich by contacting myself, Professor Geoff White, on wg08@gre.ac.uk.

HOW TO FIND US

Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, Greenwich, London SE10 9LZ

Telephone: +44 20 8331 9083 E-mail: i3centre@gre.ac.uk

26th October 2016

Announcing the Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade at the TA Best Practice Exchange, 3rd November 2016

We are delighted to announce that Barry Gardiner, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, Europe, Energy and Climate Change within the new Department for International Trade will be joining us for the TA Best Practice Exchange.

He will joining an excellent speaker line-up with Nick Hurd, MP, as Minister of State for Climate Change and Industry within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and also Baroness Lorely Burt, the Liberal Democrat Lords’ Principle Spokesperson for Business, Innovation and Skills, meaning that all three of the major parties will be represented on the day.

Along with immigration, trade is likely to be the other major issue which will dominate the themes as we leave the EU.  This is a key opportunity for you to engage with Government early as the debate around the UK leaving Europe hots up.  Don’t miss out on the chance to make your voices heard and input into the negotiations as we consider the options and various Brexit models for the UK.

Join us on Thursday, 3^rd November 2016 at One Drummond Gate, London (etc. venues) to interact with our guests and participate in many more activities on the day, including discussion sessions delivered by experts and Award winning trade associations covering:

• Our Governance Surgery for 2016 – Measuring Board Skills and Effectiveness
• How to create a successful in-house magazine
• Membership Recruitment – Tips for Success
• The Importance of Good PR
• Using Your Members for Promotion
• The Internet of Things
• Benchmarking your TA Against Others
• Communicating with the World – What your Website says about You
• Collaborative Working at its Best
• Lobbying Ethically and Influencing Policy in the Right Way

Don’t delay, click here to reserve your places and take advantage of our special offer of three for the price of two.  Come along for just £295 + VAT per person or £590 + VAT for three!

See you there!

Linda

L M Cavender (Mrs)

Chief Executive

Trade Association Forum Ltd

20th October 2016

Shaping the world of work - time for a UK jobs strategy

The latest Warwick Industrial Relations Paper (No 105) has just been published and is available on-line:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/research/irru/wpir/wpir105.pdf

It's by Keith Sisson and entitled "Shaping the world of work - time for a UK jobs strategy"

17th October 2016

CfP- Special Issue: Board-level Employee Representation --- Its Impact and Future

Guest Co-Editors: Michael Gold, Royal Holloway University of London; Chris Rees, Royal Holloway University of London and Jeremy Waddington, University of Manchester

 Recent work on employee participation published in English-language journals has centred on its effectiveness in improving organizational performance as well as on specific forms like direct employee involvement, consultation and trends in collective bargaining. Yet all these forms focus on day-to-day workplace issues, involving the implementation and monitoring of policies decided at higher organizational levels. Such analysis has generally neglected the ways in which employee representatives can influence earlier stages of strategic corporate decision-making.

This special issue will aim to fill this gap, by addressing the role of board-level employee representation (BLER), a topic that lies at the intersection of the literature on employee participation and corporate governance. 

We invite prospective authors to submit an abstract on some aspect of board-level employee participation and its operation in Europe. This abstract should be roughly 1,000 words long, and contain a title, key references, methods, main findings and conclusions. Please submit it to the editor [r.hyman@lse.ac.uk], copied to the guest co-editors [M.Gold@rhul.ac.uk; Chris.Rees@rhul.ac.uk; jeremy.waddington@virgin.net], by 31 March 2017.

The themes we aim to cover include:

• The history and origins of BLER across Europe, and changes to its current structure and functioning, following the 2008 global financial crisis.
• The degree of influence that board-level employee representatives are able to exert, such as analyses of power relationships on the board.
• The question of incorporation, that is, the extent to which employee representatives retain or lose their independence through coming to identify with shareholder perspectives.
• The strength of the links between board-level employee representatives and their union and works council structures (‘articulation’).
• Gender issues and the role of women as board-level employee representatives.
• Policy debates and outcomes in countries, including Belgium, Italy and the UK amongst others, that do not provide for BLER.
• The role of BLER in the ‘sustainable company’, and its influence on corporate performance with respect to environmental and social matters.
• The relationship between BLER as a form of employee participation and the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and we welcome any abstracts within this general brief.

17th October 2016

4th BUIRA PhD Symposium - University of Leeds, 10-11 November 2016

The British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) invites you to take part in the 4th BUIRA PhD Symposium to be held at the University of Leeds on 10-11 November 2016.

The deadline for abstract submission is Friday 21 October 2016. Abstracts of no longer than 500-words should be submitted to buiraphd@outlook.com.

Registration to the Symposium can be made online via https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buira-phd-symposium-tickets-27673176215

The Symposium is a unique opportunity to build a professional network. It will kick off with an engaging academic discussion on the future of employment relations and prospects of employer-employee partnership.

Key discussants:

Professor Peter Ackers – Professor of Employment Relations at De Montfort University

Professor Nick Bacon – Professor of Human Resource Management at CASS Business School (City University of London)

Professor Mark Stuart – Montague Burton Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations at Leeds University Business School

On the second day, there will be a special session on ‘Building impact into your research’, led by Dr Jo Cutter (University of Leeds). This will be followed by a general discussion relating to the development of the BUIRA PhD Network.

Should you have any queries regarding the Symposium please do not hesitate to contact us at buiraphd@outlook.com.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Leeds!

14th October 2016

The University of Western Australia

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor HR / Employment Relations |REF:496728 |

The details can be found at http://external.jobs.uwa.edu.au/cw/en/job/496728/lecturer-senior-lecturer-associate-professor-hr-employment-relations-ref496728

11th October 2016

IRRU call for information on research of relevance to GLAA

Following the Immigration Act 2016, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority is evolving into the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA). The GLAA retains its licensing and regulatory function of temporary labour in food and farming but will have a much broader role and new powers to address labour exploitation across the entire labour market. GLAA activity and new powers cover a wide range from modern slavery/forced labour through to non-compliance with statutory employment rights and associated regulation. All types of workers in all sectors of the economy are covered. (see www.gla.gov.uk)

The GLAA wishes to establish/reinforce contacts with academics working in relevant areas in order to be able to draw on current and recent academic research to inform its strategy, intelligence and operations and potentially to stimulate (and assist) in future research to fill gaps in knowledge. Warwick’s Industrial Relations Research Unit (IRRU) is assisting the GLAA in this. There is relevant research being undertaken at Warwick and work elsewhere that is known about. But we wish to compile a more comprehensive list of research and researchers and encourage interaction. We propose to host an academic workshop in Spring 2017.

If you are undertaking or supervising relevant research (or have recently published same) please send information to IRRU by the end of October (contact details below). Please do this even if you have had direct contact with GLA. If you know of work being done by people outside the range of BUIRA mailing please draw their attention to this call.

There is a wide range of areas of potential relevance. These include research on

• specific sectors where there may be ‘high risk’ (a non-exhaustive list beyond the current GLA sector of food and farming might include parts of construction, transport/warehousing, the care sector, beauty industry, hand car washing, accommodation and food services, textiles, parts of manufacturing...)
• migrant labour employment, exploitation and trafficking
• characteristics and nature of vulnerable workers and of labour exploitation in UK
• organisational structure/business models; employment patterns and working practices;
• supply chains; small business etc. which may cast light on labour exploitation issues

Professor Guglielmo Meardi (Director, IRRU, WBS) and Professor Linda Dickens (Emeritus Professor

University of Warwick; Board member GLA)

Please send your contact details and a brief outline of your research (with details of any published material where applicable) before the end of October to Val.Jephcott@wbs.ac.uk

11th October 2016

Advertising ILPC Climate Change Stream call for papers

The 34th International Labour Process Conference 2017

‘Re-Connecting Work and Political Economy’, Sheffield 4-6 April

Special Stream Call for Papers

A Volatile Political Economy: Work, Climate Change and Labour: Labour Process Perspectives

Prof. Carla Lipsig-Mummé (carlalm@yorku.ca), York University, Canada,

Prof. Linda Clarke, University of Westminster, UK,

Donald Lafleur, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress,

Dr. Elaine Bernard, Director of Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School, US

Despite international efforts, the world is warming more rapidly than expected. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the world of work in industrialised countries produces 80% of human-created greenhouse gas emissions. Work, worksites and production supply chains are major polluters. The new retreat into defensive nationalism adds to the difficulties of combatting at an international level the global danger we confront. It is vital to re-connect work and political economy, so that the transition to a low carbon economy becomes an international driver for transforming the labour process to the benefit of workers.

Bringing workers and unions and work itself ‘in’ to the struggle to slow global warming entails rethinking the labour process through a green lens, and adapting key steps in the chain of production to mitigate greenhouse gases. It entails reconsidering the legal, political and economic contexts that hinder or facilitate workplace low-carbon adaptation, bringing labour and environment law together, criticising work design and current business models for their carbon excesses, and rediscovering the influential roles that workers, their unions and professional associations can play in adapting and improving the labour process. And, finally, it means understanding the ways in which political economies and responses to climate change affect not only the labour process, but union goals, alliances, modes of action, organisation of young workers, political strength and strategic creativity.

The Stream welcomes abstracts for papers on changing national and international political economies and their role in aiding, obstructing, or transforming the role of work and unions in transitioning to a global low-carbon economy.

We welcome papers that take up a range of issues.

1.      International, sectoral, policy-oriented, conceptual, or activist approaches to the climate change-labour process relationship

2.      The role of labour unions in greening the labour process

3.      Supply chains, politics and political economies: the challenge of mitigating carbon emissions.

4.      Transforming the energy production process

5.      Gender, race and class implications of the green labour process transition

6.      Innovative collective bargaining and ‘climate bargaining’ by unions

7.      Green education and training for workers, union activists, negotiators, leaders

8.      Climate change, young workers and union renewal

Submissions via the web-site www.ilpc.org.uk closing date 21st October 2016

11th October 2016

CfP: Early Career Researchers Event 'Developing future agendas in welfare to work research'

Call for Papers for BSA Early Careers Forum/CERIC event

‘Developing future agendas in welfare to work research’

Friday 27th January 2017

University of Leeds

Keynotes: Prof Tracy Shildrick (Leeds) and Dr Sharon Wright (Glasgow)

This event focuses on broadening the scope of ‘welfare to work’/active labour market policy research. It aims to explore how sociological insights (e.g. sociology of work, intersectionality, organisational sociology) and other perspectives (e.g. migration, labour market theory, organisation theory, employment relations) can be integrated to illuminate this important topic in an inter-disciplinary way, in order to forge innovative new research agendas. The event also aims to be a springboard for an ongoing network of scholars, including for grant collaborations, journal special issues, edited collections or special conference streams. Papers are invited from doctoral researchers and ECRs up to 7 years post-PhD. Presenters will receive feedback from discussants who are established academics. 

Contributors are encouraged to explore the theoretical, empirical and methodological aspects of researching this area and to consider future research avenues, including:

 How can we understand the changing delivery of welfare to work theoretically and comparatively through the intersection of sociological and other perspectives?

• How do actual and potential programme participants across different social groups perceive changes in welfare to work?
• How do processes of welfare conditionality and sanctions operate and with what outcomes?
• What can we learn from the lived experiences of actual and potential programme participants across different social groups and what are the implications for citizenship?
• What are the challenges for those impacted by welfare to work in view of the changing mobility/welfare rights within the EU and in the context of the UK’s vote to leave the EU?
• How are the roles of actors and organisations delivering welfare to work changing and how do they perceive these changes? What kinds of social relations are being developed between these actors and other organisations?
• What kinds of methodological innovations can we employ to provide novel insights into this area?
• What are the policy implications that arise from the research evidence?
• What can we learn from the experiences of other countries?
• How can we more effectively engage the public in our research findings?