The Conditions Promoting Compromise in the Workplace

A previous article developed a framework to understand workplace co‐operation. We now elaborate on the key structuring conditions (technology, product markets and institutional regulation) generating different patterns and illustrate from field research how these different workplace regimes develop. Conditions generating positive and sustainable outcomes for both capital and labour are feasible but rare; stronger ‘beneficial constraints’ are needed if they are to be made more frequent. This article provides an alternative to current interpretations of labour–management co‐operation in the industrial relations literature.     

Beyond the Union‐Centred Approach: A Critical Evaluation of Recent Trade Union Elections in China

Many Western scholars have regarded union democracy and elections as affairs that are internal to trade unions and unconnected with outside forces. Going beyond the mainstream union‐centred approach, this study critically assesses one significant type of union election that has been emerging in China since 2010 and that has been driven by different forces from previous elections. Previous workplace union elections had been ‘top‐down’ — initiated by the party‐state or its apparatuses, or else transnational corporation‐induced — but this newer type of election has been driven by workers' strikes. This study illustrates how the dynamics among the quadripartite actors — party‐state, higher‐level trade unions, capital and labour — have shaped these strike‐driven elections. Contrary to the claim that these elections have been ‘direct’ and ‘democratic’, our case studies show that they have been indirect and quasi‐democratic in nature.     

From Coping Strategies to Tactics: London's Low‐Pay Economy and Migrant Labour

This article examines the means by which low‐paid migrant workers survive in a rapidly changing and increasingly unequal labour market. In a departure from the coping strategies literature, it is argued that the difficulties migrant workers face in the London labour market reduces their ability to ‘strategize’. Instead, workers adopt a range of ‘tactics’ that enable them to ‘get by’, if only just, on a day‐to‐day basis. The article explores these tactics with reference to the connections between different workers’ experiences of the workplace, home and community, and demonstrates the role of national, ethnic and gender relations in shaping migrant workers’ experiences of the London labour market and of the city more widely.     

False Self‐Employment,Autonomy and Regulating for Decent Work: Improving Working Conditions in the UK Stripping Industry

A large‐scale study of working conditions in UK‐based strip dancing clubs reveals that dancers are against de facto self‐employment as it is defined and practised by management, but in favour of de jure self‐employment that ensures sufficient levels of autonomy and control in the workplace. While dancers could potentially seek ‘worker’ or ‘employee’ status within the existing legal framework, their strong identification with the label ‘self‐employed’ and their desire for autonomy will likely inhibit these labour rights claims. We propose an alternative avenue for improving dancers’ working conditions, whereby self‐employed dancers articulate their grievances as a demand for decent work, pursued through licensing agreements between clubs and local authorities and facilitated by collective organization.     

Do Broad‐based Employee Ownership,Profit Sharing and Stock Options Help the Best Firms Do Even Better?

This article analyses the linkages among group incentive methods of compensation (broad‐based employee ownership, profit sharing and stock options), labour practices, worker assessments of workplace culture, turnover and firm performance in firms that applied to the ‘100 Best Companies to Work For in America’ competition from 2005 to 2007. Although employers with good labour practices self‐select into the 100 Best Companies firms sample, which should bias the analysis against finding strong associations among modes of compensation, labour policies and outcomes, we find that employees in the firms that use group incentive pay more extensively participate more in decisions, have greater information sharing, trust supervisors more and report a more positive workplace culture than in other companies. The combination of group incentive pay with policies that empower employees and create a positive workplace culture reduces voluntary turnover and increases employee intent to stay and raises return on equity.     

Expert labour as a differentiated category: power,knowledge and organisation

The idea of ‘expert labour’ as a category uniting many kinds of knowledge‐based work has long been of interest. At the same time, existing models often do not differentiate between the many forms of ‘new’ expertise in the main business and technological groups. These tend to be consolidated in single categories of ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘organisational’ or ‘commercial’ professions. This paper built on Reed's seminal account of the expert division of labour. It used his analytic dimensions of power, knowledge and organisation to develop a new framework comparing clusters of expert labour in professional services, business services and knowledge work. It offered a more detailed classification and a comparative view that throws fresh light on key debates around new professionalism and emergent technologically defined occupations.     

Negotiating ‘Difference’: Representing Disabled Employees in the British Workplace

Drawing on qualitative interviews with disabled employees, union officers and disability‐related organizations, this article examines employee attempts to negotiate workplace adjustments and associated issues of workplace representation. UK employment law utilizes an individual medical model of disability, which conflicts with traditional collective approaches favoured by trade unions, which has implications for disabled employees and union representation. We explore the different strategies available to unions and conclude that, despite the role played by disability‐related organizations in supporting employees, unions are the only workplace actors who are capable of reconfiguring the ‘personal as political’ and integrating disability concerns into wider organizational agendas.     

Improving Working Conditions in Garment Supply Chains: The Role of Unions in Cambodia

Given the disappointing outcomes of private regulation of labour in global supply chains, worker organization is increasingly seen as the key to better working conditions. This article examines the extent to which unions impact different dimensions of labour standard compliance in Cambodia's garment export sector, where unions have grown considerably. Based on unique factory‐level data and field‐based interviews, this study shows that union presence improves factories’ compliance with wage, hours, and leave standards, although the impact is much less significant for health and safety. Moreover, having multiple unions in the workplace does not appear to improve labour conditions.     

Catching Fire: Institutional Interdependencies in Union‐Facilitated Knowledge Diffusion

I find that school union representatives’ ‘boundary spanning’ communications throughout the school district predict the diffusion of knowledge between schools. Hence, my data reveal school union representatives as critical conduits for improvement‐related knowledge transfer and innovation. Yet, I also find that these external networks interact strongly with the level of workforce participation characterizing each school: The effects of external networks on internal knowledge diffusion are considerably stronger in more participative schools compared to less participative schools. This research contributes to industrial relations scholarship by demonstrating how union‐related institutions can foster unique social structures that directly strengthen innovation‐related capabilities, as well as how the efficacy of these networks depends on managerial norms at different areas of the organization. This study is also of timely practical relevance at a time when labour unions are increasingly painted as obstacles to, rather than potential facilitators of, improvement and innovation.     

Shades of Authoritarianism and State–Labour Relations in China

Attempts to analyse authoritarianism in China tend towards a static focus on the state that is homogeneous across time. We argue for a more nuanced approach that captures the dynamism and contours of state–civil society relations, and state–labour relations, in particular, in authoritarian states. Taking state–labour relations as a bellweather, we conceptualize ‘shades of authoritarianism’ as a framework for better understanding the complexities and evolution of state–society relations in authoritarian states. We illustrate this through the case of China, distinguishing different shades of authoritarianism in the Hu‐Wen era (2002–2012) and in the current regime of Xi Jinping     

Ten Years After: South African Employment Relations Since the Negotiated Revolution

Post‐apartheid South Africa has embarked on an ambitious programme of labour market reform in pursuit of ‘dynamic efficiency’ and ‘redistributive justice’. It involves both legislation to promote equality among races and an institutional framework inspired by the European Social Model. We examine how this framework has fared over the past decade, in particular pinpointing the tension between adversarial traditions and the new social partnership, and between market‐oriented economic policy and corporatist institutions. Our conclusion is that the system has performed reasonably well, but tackling the mass unemployment at the root of continued inequality is a far longer‐term project.     

Is Good Work Good for Democracy? Work,Change at Work and Political Participation in Canada and England

This article draws on data from 750 Canadian and 450 English workers to systematically explore the implications of work for political participation, addressing whether ‘good’ work, and recent trends identified in work and employment, appear to be good for political participation. It finds that various aspects of work and of the work experience, many of which have been associated with recent trends, can have significant implications. However, these implications tend to differ for ‘passive’ and ‘active’ forms of participation and to be weak for the former. Moreover, characteristics that might be associated with ‘good’ work have negative as well as positive spillovers, suggesting contradictory effects and reducing the net positive effects of good jobs. Finally, there is some (albeit limited) evidence of cross‐national differences, especially with regard to the implications of union representation.     

‘Fair Work’ and the Modernization of Australian Labour Standards: A Case of Institutional Plasticity Entrenching Deepening Wage Inequality

Australia was long recognized for its relatively compressed wage structure. From the 1940s to the 1970s this was associated with a comprehensive regime of ‘award‐based’ minimum wages. Since the 1980s, this has been subjected to comprehensive ‘modernization’. After three decades of reform and in the most supportive economic environment in the OECD, Australian wage inequality has deepened. Although multiple political‐economic forces have been at play, the evolution of Australia's labour standards regime is an example of ‘institutional plasticity’ whereby the purpose and operations of wage‐setting institutions not only evolves but can actually be inverted over time.     

A Tale of Two Deltas: Labour Politics in Jiangsu and Guangdong

This article examines the sources of variation in Chinese workplace governance between otherwise similar parts of the country. Jiangsu's portion of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Guangdong's portion of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) are both booming export hubs with large numbers of migrant workers. Yet, in the former region, authorities manage conflict with orthodoxy and coaxing; in the latter, with experimentation and coercion. Using interviews and government yearbooks, the article conceives of the YRD and PRD as ‘regional fields’ within the broader ‘field’ of Chinese labour politics. Greater worker militancy and organization is pushing the PRD field off‐balance, yielding more innovative but brutal policies. Although it has become common to explain governance in China from an elite perspective, grassroots contention is thus key. Bottom‐up pressures generate top‐down policy. This, the author contends, is true even under Xi Jinping.     

Online,on call: the spread of digitally organised just‐in‐time working and its implications for standard employment models

This article questions whether the dominant policy discourse, in which a normative model of standard employment is counterposed to ‘non‐standard’ or ‘atypical’ employment, enables us to capture the diversity of fluid labour markets in which work is dynamically reshaped in an interaction between different kinds of employment status and work organisation. Drawing on surveys in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands that investigate work managed via online platforms (‘crowdwork’) and associated practices, it demonstrates that crowdwork represents part of a continuum. Not only do most crowd workers combine work for online platforms with other forms of work or income generation, but also many of the ICT‐related practices associated with crowdwork are widespread across the rest of the labour market where a growing number of workers are ‘logged’. Future research should not just focus on crowdworkers as a special case but on new patterns of work organisation in the regular workforce.     

Buying into Capitalism? Employee Ownership in a Disconnected Era

This article considers whether employee ownership mitigates the negative workplace outcomes identified by the Disconnected Capitalism Thesis (DCT). Drawing on a programme of in‐depth interviews with workers and managers in employee‐owned businesses (EOBs), the article reveals how they are partially insulated from the vicissitudes endemic within contemporary capitalism. In contrast to the workplace outcomes envisaged within the DCT, these firms are characterized by strong workforce participation, high levels of employment security, active employee engagement and strong levels of employee creativity. Not only are these features beneficial for productivity and firm performance, they generate a form of ‘connected’ capitalism, partially offsetting wider negative systemic forces at play in the economy.     

Accounting for Greenfield Union Organizing Outcomes

This paper presents a framework for evaluating and accounting for the outcomes of ‘greenfield’ union organizing campaigns. It argues that previous studies have tended to focus too much on the establishment of collective bargaining and negotiation of first contract as a campaign outcome. Instead, the effectiveness and representativeness of new union structures are emphasized, and the sustainability of those structures is emphasized as the most important outcome. A key finding from the empirical data is that campaigns that build both workplace activism and are co‐ordinated by officers create more sustainable outcomes than campaigns that focus on one or the other. The evidence shows how and why these outcomes emerge, and the paper concludes with a consideration of the theoretical and practical implications.     

The Contribution of National Vocational Qualifications to the Growth of Skills in the UK

This article evaluates the British system of NVQs, focusing on their capacity to increase skill levels. It reviews the way NVQs were designed and argues that they are ill‐equipped to encourage knowledge and skills, partly because they simply replicate the weaknesses which currently exist in the labour market and partly because of the focus on observed workplace behaviours. NVQs were intended to be ‘employer‐led’ and the assumptions underpinning their design are unitarist. In contrast, the German apprenticeship system is developed and implemented by pluralist consortia and results in qualifications that are far better equipped to support skill levels.     

‘Meet the New Boss … Same as the Old boss?’ Technology,toil and tension in the agrofuel frontier

Agrofuels are increasingly sourced and sold as a socially and environmentally beneficial solution to oil dependence. The promotion of sugar‐derived ethanol as a substitute for petroleum has thus been key to state development and international trade policies by Brazil and the European Union, respectively, and subsequent investment by leading energy and food transnational corporations has transformed socio‐spatial relations in the new sites of production. Brazilian rural worker testimonies, however, point to large‐scale labour exclusion rather than reform and a deepening, rather than disruption, of historic power inequalities in the sector. Labour contestation challenges a converging institutional discourse of responsible technological innovation and social upgrading associated with emerging commodity chains and the ‘green’ economy. Although corporate and statutory response has been market‐orientated certification and ‘more technology’ the idea of the ‘techno‐institutional fix’ provides a power relation‐attentive analysis that invites the further exploration of socially committed alternatives to food and energy production.