24 November 2023, 10:30am-4pm
The University of Leicester main campus and via Teams. Free registration at: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/futureofwork/1053494
Britain has, over the past year and a half, experienced its highest level of strike action since the 1980s. There have been similar upsurges in industrial action in many other countries, including France, Portugal and the US. This inaugural research event of the new Future of Work research cluster at the University of Leicester, will discuss the implications of the recent rise in strike action for the theory and practice of industrial relations.
The event will consist of two panels and is open to academics and to all those with an interest in work, employment and industrial relations.
Session 1: The strike wave in Britain and its implications (11:00-12:45)
With Professor Jane Holgate (University of Leeds) and Professor Ralph Darlington (Salford University)
Session 2: Surveying the terrain, strikes in the US, France and beyond (13:45-15:30)
With Eric Blanc (Rutgers, US) and Kevin Guillas-Cavan (IRES, France), and Lisa Sezer (Leicester) as discussant.
The event will be in a hybrid format: in person on the main campus of the University of Leicester and via Teams online. Once registered, you will be sent venue details or a link for Teams as appropriate.
Speaker details:
Jane Holgate is Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Leeds. She is the author of Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence (Pluto, 2021) and co-editor of Union Voices: Developing Organizing in the UK (Ithaca, 2012). She has held a number of positions in the trade union movement and has worked on research projects with trade unions, including the GMB, TGWU, CWU, Bectu, Usdaw and the Trades Union Congress.
Ralph Darlington is Emeritus Professor of Employment Relations at Salford University, Fellow and Honorary Member of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association. He is editor of What’s the Point of Industrial Relations: In Defence of Critical Social Science (BUIRA, 2009), and author of Radical Unionism: The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism (Haymarket, 2013), Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain 1972 (Bookmarks, 2001, with Dave Lyddon), and Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14 (Pluto, 2023).
Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labour studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics (Verso, 2019) and Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire, 1882-1917 (Haymarket, 2022).
Kevin Guillas-Cavan is an economist working in Paris at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (IRES). His studies focus on industrial relations and trade union strategy, especially at the firm level.
Lisa Sezer is a lecturer in work and employment at the University of Leicester School of Business and a member of the Future of Work research cluster.
For further information, please email Joseph Choonara (jc770@le.ac.uk).