BUIRA Scotland and the Glasgow Labour, Employment and Work network warmly invite you to a hybrid seminar on precarity in academia and beyond.

On 7th June (2.30-4.30pm) Krista Bonello  and Lena Wånggren will be discussing their 2023 book, Working Conditions in a Marketised University System: Generation Precarity | SpringerLink  at The University of Glasgow.

The book provides an in-depth qualitative report on casualised academic staff in the UK, mapping shared experiences and strategies for resistance. Bringing together testimonial data spanning seven years, it offers evidence of how precarious labour conditions have persisted, shifted and intensified.
The book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the fields of education, human resources management, labour studies and sociology, as well as trade unionists and university policymakers.

Krista and Lena will be joined by discussants, including Niall Ingram from UCU Glasgow’s, Anti-Casualisation Committee who will respond to the authors’ presentation, with plenty of time for Q&A from the audience in person and online.

For those joining us in Glasgow,  the seminar will be followed by a social at The Sparkle Horse https://thesparklehorse.com/

To register your attendance and obtain joining details, please follow the link.
https://events.bookitbee.com/university-of-glasgow-258/buira-scotland-glew-event-generation-precarity-706/

Date and Time: Wednesday 05 June 2024, 13:00 – 14:30

Speaker: Deborah Dean (IRRU, WBS) and Anne-Marie Greene (University of York School of Business and Society)

Title: You must remember this: organisational memory, morality and endurance.
Abstract: Drawing on findings from an interdisciplinary AHRC-funded project 2019-2023, we respond to recent calls to understand how an organisation’s current moral principles are shaped by collective memory. Our response goes further, in demonstrating how a moral dimension to collective memory contributes to an organization’s endurance – of identity and operation – through many years of financial precarity. This is through examination of Clean Break, a UK theatre, campaigning and advocacy organisation that for over four decades has worked with women affected by the criminal justice system. We observe empirical effects stemming from the company’s ‘origin story’ as founded by two women prisoners in 1979, using the analytical lenses of organisational memory studies and historical institutionalism, emphasising significance of when and how an institution comes into being. We make a significant contribution in demonstrating that the relationship between morality and memory has empirical and theoretical significance in accounting for how and why an organisation endures.
Biographies:
Deborah Dean is Associate Professor of Industrial Relations and Co-Director Industrial Relations Research Unit, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. Research interests centre on equality and diversity issues in work; the interrelation of social, legal, and cultural regulation.
Anne-marie Greene is Professor of Work and Diversity and Director of Research Impact at the School for Business and Society, University of York.
Anne-marie researches equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in theory and practice. A particular research interest is the interface between work, life, family and community, especially where a sense of calling, mission or activism is required. This often concerns areas of work that stand outside of the standard employment relationship and which are less formally regulated, bringing with them challenges of management policy and practice and issues of inequality. Research projects have involved volunteer managers and volunteers, clergy, actors, freelance creatives, diversity consultants and trade union representatives.
Anne-marie is Artistic Director of the Criterion Theatre, Coventry, a volunteer-run charity.
Location: The seminar will be hybrid (In-person at WBS and Online via Zoom). Please email Louise Cullen (irruoffice@wbs.ac.uk) if you would like to attend in-person (for security purposes and entry in the WBS building).

Register:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/irru-202324-speaker-series-with-anne-marie-greene-and-deborah-dean-tickets-910314564367?aff=oddtdtcreator

2-5pm WEDNESDAY 5 JUNE.

UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH, HAMILTON HOUSE, LONDON SE10 9LZ

Chair: Dr Elisa Pannini, CREW

The past two years have seen very high inflation and a cost of living crisis. There have been a wide range of strikes across both the public and private sectors and a much higher level of pay settlements. In the public sector the Pay Review Bodies have been severely tested. There have been large increases in the National Minimum Wage, continuing in April 2024. Although most media attention has been on strikes in the NHS, schools and the civil service, in reality average earnings growth has been higher in the private sector than the public sector, with the highest increases in the finance and business services sector.

Where do we go from here? What is the employers’ agenda? What are the unions looking for? Will there be reform of the Pay Review Bodies? Will a change of government lead to a new remit for the Low Pay Commission? What are the unresolved issues from the disputes of the past two years? This webinar seeks to review the current picture and contemplate future developments.

Our expert speakers are as follows:

Dr Duncan Brown. Independent reward consultant and Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich.

Tim Butcher. Chief Economist and Deputy Secretary, Low Pay Commission

Louisa Withers and Ken Mulkearn. Incomes Data Research.

This is a hybrid webinar and you can either attend either in person or online.  Details of how to register for this event on Eventbrite and how to find Hamilton House are shown below.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crew-webinar-the-future-of-pay-and-reward-202425-tickets-901382608647?aff=oddtdtcreator

If attending in person there will be a buffet lunch available at 1pm.

We would like to invite you to our upcoming CREW Seminar: The Government’s New Anti-Strike Legislation, to be held on Wednesday 29^th May 2024 14:00 – 16:00, in Hamilton House HH103, 15 Park Vista, Greenwich, London SE10 9LZ .

Please note, there are limited spaces available. To register for this event, please click here.

In the 1980s and 1990s Conservative Governments contemplated, but in the end avoided, direct legal interventions to curtail strikes by workers in essential public services. But 2022/23, in the face of a huge wave of strikes in the public services, the Government passed the Strikes (minimum service levels) Act 2023 which gives Ministers and employers powers to restrict industrial action by imposing minimum service levels.
The legislation is particularly aimed at employees in the NHS, despite the fact that the doctors’ union, the BMA, operates a system of cover during strike days, as does the Royal College of Nurses and Unison.
The speakers will examine the detail of the legal changes and the reasons behind the legislation. There will also be discussion of the trade union response to the new law.

The Speakers:
Dr Ioannis Katsaroumpas, University of Sussex    I.Katsaroumpas@sussex.ac.uk
Dr Ioannis Katasroumpas is a Lecturer in Employment Law in the Department of Law at the University of Sussex. His most recent research focuses on UK and Greek collective labour law and international labour law. Dr Katsaroumpas has been the author (or co-author) of reports of the European Parliament, International Labour Organisation and the European Trade Union Institute. He is an executive committee member of the Hellenic Observatory of Institutions, Culture and Development of the University of Athens and co-ordinator of the Committee of Labour and Social Rights. Dr Katsaroumpas holds an LL.B (First Class) from University of Athens , M.Jur, M. Phil in Law (Distinction) and D. Phil in law from University of Oxford. His article on the Act can be found here.

Hannah Reed, Unite the Union
Hannah Reed is Co-ordinator of Constitutional Affairs at Unite the union. She was formerly Senior Employment Rights Officer in the TUC’s Economic and Social Affairs Department. She was responsible for trade union and employment law, including collective and individual employment rights.  Hannah used to represent the TUC on the Employment Tribunal User Group and previously was a Member of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority Board.  She is also an Executive Committee Member of the Industrial Law Society.

Date: Wednesday 05 June
Time: 11:00 – 12:30
Room: Alliance Manchester Business School 2.008
Followed by lunch

To register: Collectivism after collectivism

Synopsis
The talk will explore orientations to collectivism amongst ex-steelworkers, based on an international collaborative study involving the UK, Sweden and Australia tracing the post-redundancy transitions of people five to ten years after the initial job loss. In framing the discussion, the talk will draw on various aspects of the debates around collectivism, notably the divide between norm-based or instrumental motivations, and Social Custom Theory.

Crucially, the study contributes to debates that posit a more dynamic view of collectivism, which goes beyond the tendency to conflate collectivism with union organisation and the obsession with the presence or absence of workplace conflict as an indicator of collectivism. The talk draws inspiration from studies that go beyond the factory gate to locate the world of production in the wider social domain.

Based on working-life biographical interviews with ex-steelworkers in the UK and Sweden, the talk will explore variations in orientations to collectivism over the course of their time in the steel plant and in the wake of redundancy.

About the speaker
Robert MacKenzie is Professor of Working Life Science at Karlstad University, Sweden. He has a longstanding interest in the regulation of employment and the relationship between macro, meso and micro level mechanisms of regulation.

His work has sought to link research on the social and economic experiences of workers with broader patterns of socio-economic restructuring and changes in the regulation of the employment relationship. This has led to research on the role played by trade unions, contract form and occupational identity in mediating the experience of restructuring. He has conducted research on restructuring in the telecommunications, steel and construction sectors, and broader labour market change in terms of the social and economic experiences of migrants. He has written on issues of regulation across various levels, from the role of the state, to workplace industrial relations and human resource management practices.

Professor MacKenzie is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Employment Innovation and Change (CERIC), University of Leeds and an Honorary Professor Alliance Business School, University of Manchester. He is also a Senior Editor of New Technology Work and Employment.

University of Bristol is looking for a lecturer/senior lecturer. The WEOPP group at Bristol are keen to recruit an IR/sociology colleague

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/details/?jobId=345858&jobTitle=Lecturer%20in%20Management
&
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/details/?jobId=345860&jobTitle=Senior%20Lecturer%20in%20Management

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