The Handbook of Labour Unions was published by Agenda last week – see https://www.agendapub.com/page/detail/the-handbook-of-labour-unions/?k=9781788215510

It engages with a multitude of issues including union revitalisation, union identity, union appeal, and employer power.

With 22 chapters by over 30 contributors, please order a copy for your library.

The contents are below and the prelims and introduction are now available here as a taster:

https://www.agendapub.com/resources/pdfs/chapters/HandbookofLabourUnions_GALL_prelims.pdf and the abridged chapter summaries can be found here https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.13473646

Introduction – Gregor Gall

Part I Components, Characteristics and Context

1. Union identity and appeal – Lorenzo Frangi and Tinting Zhang

2. Union interests and ideologies – Ronaldo Munck

3. Union resources: the power-resources approach – Stefan Schmalz and Edward Webster

4. Union forms: adaptation and inertia – Chiara Benassi, Christian Ibsen and Maite Tapia

5. Union governance: South Africa and its lessons – Geoffrey Wood and Christine Bischoff

6. Union relations – Kurt Vandaele

7. Union terrains – Jamie Woodcock

Part II Space, Power and Periodization

8. The liberal capitalist starting point – Stefan Berger

9. The social democratic high point – Greg Patmore

10. The “socialist” experiment – Jeremy Morris

11. The neoliberal low point – Chris Howell

Part III The Practice of Building Presence and Power

12. Union and the agendas of joint-regulation – Miguel Martinez Lucio

13. From contesting the managerial prerogative to producing workers’ control – Alan Tuckman

14. From sectionalism and sectionality to inter-sectionality – Jenny Rodriguez

15. The rationality and limitations of labour union bureaucracy – David Camfield

16. Unions as schools for lessons in democratic citizenship: implications for union strategy – Ed Snape

17. Commitment to, and activism within, labour unionism – Jack Fiorito, Andrew Keyes, Pauline De Becdelièvre and Zachary Russell

18. Working with and learning from other social movements – Heather Connolly

19. Concentric circles of class struggle: from the workplace to the world – Marissa Brookes

20. Unions and politics: why unions are not just the economic wing of the labour movement – Jörg Nowak and Roland Erne

21. Constantly outpaced and outgunned? Unions in the platform economy – Horen Voskeritsian

22. When may the interests of labour and capital align? Johanna MacNeil and Mark Bray

Conclusion – Gregor Gall

Colleagues in the WEI at Manchester University and at Limerick and Leeds Universities have developed an updated version of the Future Learn fee online course Power. Politics and Influence at Work.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/work-power-politics-influence 

This has had more than 2.000 practitioners engage with the course and has been a key part of the WEI’s work with a range of local communities and groups.

It is also a resource that can be used with students and practitioner as well as it is free to access.

The course is tied to a short introductory book to work and employment: Power, Politics and Influence at Work

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526146410/power-politics-and-influence-at-work/

The updated Future Learn course has new materials on transnational collective agreements, new forms of independent unions, the nature of the platform economy, health and safety politics at work, the challenges of developing social responsibility, and equality in the cultural sector. If you wish to have further details please contact Tony Dundon – Tony.Dundon@ul.ie – or – Miguel Martinez Lucio – miguel.martinezlucio@manchester.ac.uk

It was Adam Smith who first recognised the important role played by employer and worker collectives in the setting of wages and conditions.  Today collective bargaining is the biggest departure from market wage setting around the world.  But it takes many forms which, in theory, can have quite different consequences for workers and firms.

Despite large empirical literatures investigating effects of collective bargaining on issues as disparate as wages, productivity, firm performance and worker wellbeing, its effects remain hotly contested.  But it is only recently that the credibility revolution in empirical research has turned its attention to the causal impact of collective bargaining on workers and employers.

This Special Issue focuses on both the origins of collective bargaining and its effects on workers and employers.  We invite submissions to this Special Issue which consider the nature of the collective bargaining institutions – how they came into being and the theory informing expectations as to their impact – and present credible empirical evidence as to the causal links between collective bargaining and the outcomes of interest. If credible identification strategies are not available, we expect submissions to take account of this in their interpretation of findings.

We hope to receive submissions from around the world to expand knowledge about the implications of a range of collective bargaining institutions, and how these might differ across time and space.

Please submit an extended abstract to Alex Bryson (a.bryson@ucl.ac.uk) or Steve Raphael (stevenraphael@berkeley.edu) no later than 31^st October 2024.

There will be a symposium linked to the Special Issue which will be face-to-face at UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) on September 18^th and 19^th 2025.  Three invited papers are scheduled:

• David Card on collective bargaining in North America
• Christian Dustmann, Bernd Fitzenberger and Lutz Bellmann on the Germany system
• and Erling Barth on collective bargaining in Europe

We will invite those submitting the best abstracts to present a full paper at a symposium.

Full papers must be submitted one month before the symposium so that discussants can prepare to provide feedback at the symposium.  Authors will be able to revise their papers in response to feedback at the symposium before they are sent out for review by the journal’s editors.
IRLE will cover travel and accommodation for presenters and discussants.

The University of Sydney is currently hiring for the following two education-focused positions at Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor levels:

• Senior Lecturer in Technology and the Future of Work (Education Focused) (Level C)
• Associate Professor in Managing People and Organisations (Education Focused) (Level D)

The positions will be based in the Work and Organisational Studies (WOS) Discipline within The University of Sydney Business School is a progressive and engaged Discipline and home to over 20 leading international scholars and outstanding professional staff.  WOS researchers are particularly active in the fields of employment and industrial relations, gender and work, labour regulation, human resource management and organisational behaviour. We use both qualitative and quantitative research methods and publish in top disciplinary journals. Our research has national and international significance and policy impact and informs our teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

• Full time continuing academic Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor (Education Focused) positions at The University of Sydney
• Opportunity for the best and brightest talented educators to be part of our future at the Sydney Business School
• Base Salary Level C/D $145,023 p.a. – $192,371 p.a. + 17% superannuation + access to up to AUD$30K to support education-related activities, including education-related research and education-related professional development and learning
• Applications Close: Monday 15 April 2024 11:59 PM AEST

For more details and to apply, please click here. If you have any questions about the role, you can contact Professor Anya Johnson, Head of the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at anya.johnson@sydney.edu.au, or Associate Professor Chris F Wright, Deputy Head the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at chris.f.wright@sydney.edu.au

16^th of April 2024, 5.30 to 7pm online

Free attendance, please register here: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/women-and-employment

The UK is the twelfth wealthiest country in the world, measured per capita. But it also has high levels of wealth and income inequality and high gender wealth and earnings gaps. The UN’s human development index put the UK in eighteenth place in 2003, and the gender equality index put it in twenty seventh place.

In several respects, the story of women’s employment in the UK since the 1990s is one of success: the employment gap and working time gap between men and women have both narrowed, as has the gender pay gap. Yet although the decades it would take for average women’s pay to reach men’s has decreased during that time, it remains dauntingly high.

Policy on women and employment was active (but contentious) during the New Labour years, and the unfinished agenda continued for some years subsequently, before stalling after 2016. During the years of active policy, however, the single policy output with the biggest impact on the gender pay gap (the National Minimum Wage) did not target women as a specific group of wage earners. In this seminar, which will launch a series of events focusing on different aspects of policy relating to women and employment, we will review the development of policy over the last three decades and ask why it has proved so difficult to make progress towards a more gender-equal society.

Keynote speaker: Professor Susan Milner, University of Bath.

Discussants: Caroline Waters OBE, former Deputy Chair of the EHRC and Vice Chair of Carers UK; Kay Carberry CBE, former Assistant General Secretary at the TUC and Commissioner on the Women and Work Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Chair: Sarah Veale CBE, former Head of Equality and Employment Rights, TUC and former Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Technological Change, Power and Work

Deadline for abstract submissions: 31 July 2024
Deadline for complete paper submissions: 28 February 2025

Please join us for this Webinar hosted by the Diversity Interest Group and Centre for Research on Employment and Work.

Speakers:

Understanding Allyship

Dr Anna Kane is a Chartered Occupational and Coaching Psychologist and founder of Zest Psychology. She will share recent research “Understanding Allyship” conducted in partnership with Dr. Lilith Whiley, University of Sussex. An interactive session to illustrate the evidence synthesis of equality, diversity and inclusion within the NHS. Discover how interventions, practices and organisational processes are informed, inhibited and enabled.

Allyship, in research and in practice

Dr Rebecca Smith, Associate Professor and Institute of Lifecourse Development Practice Lead, School of Human Science University of Greenwich.

ENTRAL LONDON BUIRA SEMINAR:
Thursday 25 April 2024, 16.00 – 18.00
Brady Arts and Community Centre (Side Hall)
192-196 Hanbury Street, London E1 5HU
(5 minutes’ walk from Whitechapel Station and 10 minutes from Aldgate East and Liverpool Street)

The rights of garment workers
Dr Alessandra Mezzadri (SOAS) The Social Life of Industrial Disputes in India’s Sweatshop Regime
Tyrone Scott (War on Want) on Securing Justice for Garment Workers: the need for global solidarity
Accompanying the exhibition of the late Larry Herman’s “Garment Workers” photographs

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)
This London BUIRA (British Universities Industrial Relations Association https://www.buira.net) seminar is the first to take place outsider the University of Westminster, and to present a visual reality through the powerful photographs of Larry Herman. We are fortunate to have two expert speakers on the rights of garment workers, so providing an opportunity to air and discuss the problems confronting garment workers in an open forum and to consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend this event. Refreshments will be served, with drinks and nibbles at the end.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Alessandra Mezzadri is lead-author of the International Labour Organisation report on the Social life of industrial disputes: exploring workers-centred industrial relations in India’s garment labour regime (ILO, 2023, with Rakhi Sehgal), tracing conflicts and exploring the links between regional labour regimes in Gurugram (National Capital Region), Bengaluru (Karnataka) and Tiruppur (Tamil Nadu) and the evolution of industrial relations. Through a labour-centred approach focusing on workers’ experiences and by investigating workers’ industrial grievances filed individually or through unions, the study reveals great regional variation in labour practices and malpractices, also along gendered lines, offering, for instance, insights into the need to understand sexual harassment as a key aspect of labour disciplining on feminised shopfloors, as well as showing commonalities, such as illegal terminations, wage-theft, and shopfloor harassment. Alessandra will show how the successful resolution of disputes depends on collective mobilisation through union action, setting freedom of association as paramount to protecting ‘freedoms’ in labour-intensive sectors like garment.

Alessandra is a feminist, and development political economist of labour and social reproduction, and she is Reader in Global Development and Political Economy at SOAS, London. Her publications include The Sweatshop Regime (CUP, 2017.2021), the edited collection Marx in the Field (Anthem, 2021, 2023) and the co-edited Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work (EE, 2023).

Tyrone Scott is the Senior Movement Building and Activism Officer for War on Want, an organisation that works in the UK and with partners around the world to fight poverty and defend human rights, as part of the movement for global justice. Tyrone will speak about War on Want’s work to secure justice for garment workers and the need for global solidarity.

Larry Herman exhibition
Larry Herman was a documentary photographer, based in east London, whose projects took him from Norway and Scotland to Cuba and the Deep South of America, among other places. He aimed to work in partnership with local grassroots organisations and strongly focused on working people and their capacity to fight for a better life. Larry’s last project took him to Bangladesh, where he documented the lives of the garment workers in Dhaka. With the support and insight of local Trade Unions, he photographed the women actively spearheading the way to improve working conditions in the factories that produce cheap clothing for global markets. These photographs, that encapsulate their lives and struggle, have never before been exhibited. Larry wrote: “I’m a documentary photographer who has rejected the usual role of spectator. I photograph ideas. I align myself with those I photograph. The people in my photographs are never simply objects.”

Date and Time: Wednesday 24 April 2024, 12:30 – 14:00

Speaker: Barbara Bechter (Durham University) and Manuela Galetto (WBS)

Title: Occupational Health and Safety in ​the hospital and care sectors: a comparative, multi-level analysis of risks and response-abilities ​in the EU (Abstract attached)

Location: The seminar will be hybrid (In-person at WBS and Online via Zoom). Please email Louise Cullen (irruoffice@wbs.ac.uk) if you are attending in-person (for security purposes and entry in the WBS building).

Register:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/irru-202324-speaker-series-with-barbara-bechter-and-manuela-galetto-tickets-865467284947?aff=oddtdtcreator

New research ‘What do platform workers in the UK gig economy want?’ published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations by Nick Martindale, Alex J. Wood and Brendan Burchell https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjir.12797

Despite the considerable debate concerning the gig economy, research has yet to investigate what platform workers themselves want. In part, this is due to the difficulty of undertaking traditional social surveys in this sector. Therefore, this article makes use of a novel research design that generates a strategic non-probability sample of 510 platform workers with which to investigate workers’ preferences regarding labour rights, representation and voice. Findings suggest strong support for labour rights, trade unions and co-determination. The low pay, insecurity, risk and lack of organizational voice that we find provides a rationale for these preferences. Moreover, platform workers’ preferences are seemingly influenced by wider inequalities, with significant differences according to gender and country of birth.