Working Lives Research Institute
Christine Wall and film maker Karen Livesey have gained Lottery Funding to make
a short film about the women who worked on Waterloo Bridge during the Second
World War. The bridge was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, engineered by
Rendell, Palmer and Tritton with Lind and Co. the main contractors. Acute
wartime labour shortages resulted in many women working on the bridge. Although
the contribution women made on the Home Front in the munitions factories, Land
Army and the services is well known, their participation in the building
industry has not been recognised. Using archive material from the Imperial War
Museum together with oral history testimonies, this film hopes to reveal the
important role women played in the construction industry during the war.
Karen and Christine are both part of Concrete History a group
of women historians and film makers. If you are interested in the project please
contact us: c.wall@londonmet.ac.uk tel. 0207 320
3026 orPhotograph of Waterloo Bridge: English Heritage. Photos of women workers: Imperial War Museum Photograph Archive.
Bridget Henderson from Working Lives has won funding for a major research
project from the EU, entitled ‘Creative Approaches to Workforce
Ageing’. This project aims to develop and disseminate creative approaches
to workforce ageing among disadvantaged workers. The project partners come from
a cross-section of European employment systems with both higher and lower labour
force participation rate economies: Austria, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Together
with observers from Bulgaria they will develop a European code of innovative
practice to be disseminated widely within the target sectors and regions,
ensuring workforce ageing receives a higher priority.edited by John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon
ILR/ Cornell University Press 2005
Announcing the publication of a major new collection of essays
on working class life and culture. In John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon’s book,
contributors trace the origins of the new working-class studies, explore how it
is being developed both within and across fields, and identify key themes and
issues. Historians, economists, geographers, sociologists, and scholars of
literature and cultural studies introduce many and varied aspects of this
emerging field. Throughout, they consider how the study of working-class life
transforms traditional disciplines and stress the importance of popular and
artistic representations of working-class life. Contribution from Tim
Strangleman of Working Lives.
Paper 0-8014-8967-9
Cloth 0-8014-4252-4
Links: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu
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1st CAWA Europen
MeetingThe first Europen meeting of the CAWA project was held at the Working Lives Research Institute over the 19th and 20th December 2005. Ten delegates attended from Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Sweeden, and the UK.
Comedian and columnist Mark Steel returns with more lectures on historic figures that radically changed the political and cultural landscape of the Western world.
A co-production between BBC FOUR and the Open University, The Mark Steel Lectures feature subjects who have a global appeal across the fields of art, literature, science and politics.
Working Lives' Professor Mary Davis speaks as an expert on Sylvia Pankhurst. Please CLICK for details.
In October 2005, Ashika left Working Lives to volunteer as a delegate for the Red Cross in the Tsunami-hit region of Banda-Aceh in Indonesia. She is working on a programme to construct houses and help people rebuild their lives after the disaster just over a year ago.
Please click link below to read an article on her and the work of the Red Cross in Indonesia, published in The Sun Newspaper, December 2005.
^ topHelena Wojtczak, Christian Wolmar, and Heather Connelly gave presentations based on their new books. Helena worked as a guard on British Rail for a number of years before writing her book 'Railway Women: Expolitation, Betrayal and Triumph in the Workplace' - the first book length study of railway women in the UK. Christian Wolmar is a writer and broadcaster on railways. He has written several books on the break up of British Rail and the London Underground. Finally, Heather Connolly from University of Warwick spoke about 'The French railway workers' connection: building a new activists' trade union'.
For further information, see link below:
Trade Unions Against Racism present the results of a 3-year comparative research project looking at racial and ethnic minorities, immigration and the role of trade unions in combating racism. The research has been undertaken by an international team from Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, France and the UK who have worked closely with workers and their trade unions in the following sectors: health, retail, public transport and naval engineering, white goods manufacture, tobacco, textiles and construction.
Announcing the publication of "Labour in a Global World". This
book gets behind much generality about globalisation to examine the production
of relatively familiar commodities such as refrigerators and ovens in different
countries. By considering a range of countries - China, Taiwan and South Korea,
South Africa, Brazil and Turkey - it makes a substantive contribution to the
understanding of the diffusion of management methods, the role of the state in
employee relations, the nature of trade unionism and the impact of social
structure on production relations.
Please find full Financial Times book review:
Surhan Book Review
France’s leading expert on pensions, Professor Bernard Friot, delivered his verdict on the proposed EU constitution and its implications for wage relations at two public lectures organised by London Metropolitan University’s Working Lives Research Institute and London British Universities Industrial Relations Association, on 7 and 14 June.
He explored the premise that wages are above all the means by
which value is assigned to labour, addressing key questions in the analysis of
wage relations, for example which forms of labour are most valued, how labour is
measured and the types of payment which give it value. He also compared the
French wages and pensions system with that of the UK, Sweden and Germany.
The proposed EU constitution was decisively rejected by the French working classes, fiercely protective of the generous social benefits they enjoy. 80% of blue-collar workers and 60% of white-collar workers voted ‘non’. Professor Friot explored the reasons behind this, with reference to wage relations and the perception that a yes vote would signify further subordination to capitalism.
Bernard Friot, Professor of Sociology at Université de Paris X Nanterre, was in London as a Leverhulme Visiting Professor. Bernard is well known for his work on employment and social protection, in particular as concerns the financing of pensions.
- Politics, Labour and the Left in France; Trade union activism and social movements; Work, politics, trade union activism, social movements and gender; Constructing unionism: research on workplace activists in France; French and British trade union responses to globalisation: the case of banking trade unionism
