Taking worker productivity to a new level? Electronic Monitoring in homecare—the (re)production of unpaid labour

This article explores the use of Electronic Monitoring (EM) in homecare and its impact on the ratio of paid to unpaid working time. It argues that whilst Zero Hours Contracts (ZHCs) blur the distinction between paid and unpaid labour, the introduction of EM can formalise and regulate the demarcation between the two. In the context of local authority commissioning and constrained budgets, the combination of EM and ZHC's may excise so‐called ‘unproductive’ but available labour from homecare. In particular, the minute‐by‐minute commissioning of care that EM facilitates means the cost of homecare is anchored in the time that worker's spend in client's houses, squeezing out paid travel, time between visits, training and supervision. Paid working time is minimised whilst maximising the use of unpaid time with resulting intensification of care labour.     

‘You monitor performance at every hour’: labour and the management of performance in the supermarket supply chain

With reference to the performance management research agenda, this article focuses on the politics of production in food manufacturing and distribution companies in the supermarket supply chain. Burawoy's concept of ‘factory regimes’ is utilised to explore the broader context of labour process change in inter‐linked organisations in the retail supply chain. The article examines the extent to which new despotic or coercive regime characteristics are emerging that weakens the power of both suppliers and labour. In revealing changes in the nature and dynamics of performance regimes within these organisations, the article exposes the connections and linkages between workplaces as distinct moments in the integrated circuit of capital.     

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.     

Managerial control and the limits to employee participation in retail work spaces: evidence from a UK IKEA store

This article contributes to labour process debates around managerial control and worker autonomy in the retail workplace. Through critical analysis of managerial strategies in the production of organisational space within an IKEA store, it explores how spatial design and practice shape managerial control and employee participation. Rather than the rhetoric of employee participation espoused by IKEA, our findings emphasise how managers use space to foster employee commitment to corporate objectives. While employees do exercise their own agency and spatial practice, their actions are moulded and constrained by dominant organisational structures and managerial strategies. As such, the article augments existing labour process research by developing new insights about how the spatial dimension shapes managerial control in retail workplaces. Although workers are far from the passive recipients of management decisions apparent in much labour process theory, their participation largely serves the strategic visions and spatial plans of their employer.     

Managerial technologies and power relations: a study of the Australian waterfront

In recent times, the modern port has been characterised by rapid changes in work technologies and the consolidation of logistics functions. These changes signify an important recomposition of the port labour process and raise questions about the strategic location of frontline manual jobs. This research examines how these changes have played out in the Australian ports industry, developing the argument that a depersonalised managerial form of control is emerging with potentially challenging consequences for worker solidarity and collective organisation. The argument is that relations between port management and workers have changed significantly, with a reconfiguration of job roles, skill compositions and thus workplace power relations. It is informed by qualitative research at two Australian ports, exploring the organisation of work and the impact of recent technologies.     

Learning to labour: an evaluation of internships and employability in the ICT sector

The employability of graduates is often reduced to lists of de‐contextualised skills that graduates may or may not have and which may or may not translate to prized graduate positions. Recently, internships have become the way in which graduates acquire and demonstrate work‐readiness to potential employers. This article examines a particular type of internship in the ICT sector, namely placements incorporated in degree education. The findings suggest that while internships can enhance employability and indeed be a mechanism for accessing permanent jobs, more often, instead of ‘learning to labour’, interns are expected to be productive workers. A mini labour market operates at the undergraduate level that advantages those already possessed of the required soft skills. The emphasis on soft skills signals a shift in the nature of ICT work with attendant implications for education of workers in this sector, revealed by anchoring employability to particular labour process(es).     

Building coalitions on Facebook: ‘social media unionism’ among Danish bike couriers

Platform work represents an important challenge for the ‘Danish model’ of unionisation. Using interviews and ethnographic data, this article analyses the strategies of the Danish grassroots union movement the Wolt Workers' Group, representing principally migrant couriers using the food-delivery platform Wolt. This study is an attempt to map an emergent form of flexible labour organisation based on horizontal, informal online networks while supported in different ways by established unions. We term this strategy of balanced autonomy and support ‘social media unionism'. Wolt couriers' attempts at grassroots organisation via social media is an important and understudied issue, especially their complex relationship to union actors. The ‘social media unionism' explored in this article allows for the formation and maintenance of nimble grassroots mobilisation among workers that are otherwise hard for unions to reach, such as migrants platform workers. We argue that this strategy holds both great possibilities and challenges for the labour movement.     

Healthcare Assistants: distributional losses as a consequence of NHS modernisation?

This paper examines the labour process of Healthcare Assistants (HCAs) at a National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust (TUH) in the context of the NHS modernisation agenda. It determines whether application of the modernisation agenda is formalised at TUH and considers how HCAs are affected. The paper is based upon 60 interviews with HCAs, structured questionnaires completed by all interview respondents, observation of HCAs and interviews with non‐clinical managers. The findings show that elements of the modernisation agenda are informally implemented at TUH to the detriment of HCAs. HCAs experience distributional losses in the form of intensification as nurses deflect duties to HCAs and insulate themselves from adverse effects. HCAs resist, using selective absence when pressures mount. They ameliorate losses by re‐internalising their work as a job with caring elements not a genuine caring role. They rationalise their altered behaviour towards patients by blaming the regime's treatment of them as a subordinated group.     

工作与闲暇的经济学分析

本文对工作时间与闲日阻时间的选择进行了理论分析,从工作决策理论、家庭劳动力供给理论、时间分配理论等不同角度,分析人们对工作时间和闲暇时间选择的特征,从而进一步分析了21世纪缩短工作时间的必要性和积极意义。