In this issue we proudly announce several new important publications from WLRI staff; our excellent RAE results for 2008; a new Professional Doctorate in Researching Work; and the first ESRC collaborative PhD studentship at WLRI. As always, we have put the latest audio recordings of recent seminars online, and we highlight a project that is utilising photography to capture the way minority ethnic workers seek advice and support in the workplace.
We hope you enjoy this issue of WLRI News, and encourage your feedback and comments. Please forward this to you workmates and contacts, and encourage them to subscribe by going here. Email your comments and suggestions to: workinglives@londonmet.ac.uk
ESRC Collaborative (CASE) +3 year PhD Studentship: Collective trade union organisation among professional and white-collar managerial workers
Dr Jane Holgate has been successful in securing an ESRC collaborative (Case) studentship from the ESRC. This is a first for the WLRI and a first for London Metropolitan University. The ESRC will meet the student’s tuition fees and pay a basic (tax free) maintenance grant of £17,290 p.a. The collaborating organisation pays an additional £2,000 p.a. The research will analyse the nature of collective organisation among professional and white-collar managerial workers.
Over the last ten years there has been considerable interest in approaches to understanding collectivisation among different groups of workers and whilst there has been research on this topic among low-paid and migrant workers, there is an omission when it comes to looking at white collar managerial grades and professional workers. This is despite the fact that both in the UK and the US there has been an increase in the unionisation of professional and managerial workers.
The studentship will aim to help fill this gap by asking such questions as: Why is it that jobs or occupations that are characterised as individualised are perceived to have little in the way of a collective spirit have comparatively high trade union densities? Why have professional and managerial unions been successful in increasing membership among managerial staff? What are the factors that cause these groups of workers to cohere? To answer these, the research will be conducted through three case studies of professional and managerial trade unions chosen to provide a contrast between workers who are categorised as 'managerial and professional' but who perform sufficiently different jobs to draw out a range of factors influencing the individual decision to collectivise. The three unions collaborating on this project are the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association, Nautilus UK and Prospect.
Recordings now available for Feb and March seminars
Both seminar series continued during February and March, and the recordings of all introductions have all been made available for downloading from our audio page. In February, Dr Juli Vullnetari, Research Fellow, Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), University of Sussex and Dr. Nick Mai, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET), introduced "Migration and Development: the case of Albania". And on March 4th, Prof. Les Back, Deputy Head of Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London gave a seminar on "Obama and the Politics of Hope". Both the recordings and Les Back's Powerpoint presentation have been made available here.
Meanwhile, in the Trade Union seminar series, Roger Undy (Emeritus Reader and Emeritus Fellow Said Business School and Templeton College, University of Oxford), Tom Wilson (Head of Organisation Dept., TUC) gave a seminar on 'Trade Union Mergers; rationalisation or opportunism?' Download their introductions from this page.
This will be followed in March with a seminar on 'The Equal Pay Crisis' on March 18th, presented by Dr.Hazel Conley, from Queen Mary’s College, and Bronwyn McKenna, UNISON.
You can listen to listen to all seminar introductions on our audio page, but you won’t hear the discussions afterwards. For that, you’ll have to come along and join in. See the events page for full listings of future events.
WLRI launches new book on working lives of refugees and recent migrants
Edited by Dr Sonia McKay, of WLRI, Refugees, Recent Migrants and Employment: Challenging Barriers and Exploring Pathways was published in October 2008 by Routledge, and launched in February at the conference on Undocumented Workers' Transitions.
Upheavals in vast areas of the world have led to a growing number of international refugees, a significant proportion of which have made their way to the West. At the same time, economic and social pressures, together with skills and labour shortages, have encouraged the migration for work of millions of workers worldwide. Although there has been a constant media focus on these two groups, little is known about their labour market experiences.
This collection examines the problems faced by refugees and recent migrants in accessing employment as well as the policy frameworks that address the labour market rights of refugees and economic migrants.
Allan Williams, Professor of European Integration and Globalization, and Vladimir Balaz (Visiting Professor, ISET), published International Migration and Knowledge in February. This book builds on several research projects that the two authors have undertaken in recent years on skilled labour migration, entrepreneurial migration and innovation, especially in Central Europe.
It integrates the findings from these projects into an overview of the role of international migration in knowledge creation and transfer. The authors stress knowledge rather than skills for two reasons. First, because the skills literature makes a false dichotomy between skilled and unskilled workers, whereas they argue for a focus on the knowledgeable migrant.
Secondly, by focussing on knowledge, it is possible to identify the extent to which tacit knowledge is more or less transferable between places, as opposed to being socially situated, and rooted in particular institutions and cultural systems. While the first part of the book largely deals with issues around the theorising of knowledge and migration, the second part examines how selective and uneven knowledge transfers via migration shape and are shaped at different levels, ranging from the national to the individual. The focus on the knowledgeable migrant is a deliberate attempt to develop a less elitist approach to analysing the role of migration in knowledge transfer. The book aims to inform us as much about the underused knowledge of many - perhaps the majority of - migrants in contrast to much of the academic and policy focus on particular icons of the knowledge society such as mobile scientists, and international financiers.
WLRI launches Professional Doctorate: Researching Work
Want to understand the changing world of work and working lives? Keen to explore the meaning of work, globalisation and social change? Actively engaged in the trade union movement, the social, community, non-governmental or voluntary sector and wish to enhance your own working life through further study and pursue your own doctoral level research into an area related to your work?
The Professional Doctorate in Researching Work, taught by internationally recognised experts at London Metropolitan University’s prestigious Working Lives Research Institute, could be for you.
This new course encourages you to reflect and draw upon your professional experience, to develop your own theoretical approach and practical research skills. Studied part time, it is delivered flexibly to fit around your own working life. Our Prof.D course integrates your doctoral level research into the vibrant WLRI community and provides you with full support, rather than leaving you to the isolation that is typical of PhD studies.
Modules include:
Contemporary Work
Theories of Work and Globalisation
Social Action and Organisation
Applied Research Methods
You would normally have completed an MA, but relevant experience or professional qualifications can be considered. Want to know more? Call Sian Moore for further info, on 020 7320 3042, or email workinglives@londonmet.ac.uk
Comrade or Brother? 'Ideal for purpose' history of British labour movement
Mary Davis, deputy director of Working Lives, published a revised, updated and expanded edition of this classic feminist account of British labour history 'Comrade or Brother?: A History of the British Labour Movement' in Feb 2009, with Pluto Press.
John Foster, Emeritus Professor, University of the West of Scotland, said: "The book stands comparison with A.L.Morton's 'People's History' and G.D.H. Cole's 'Common People'. But it is more than just this. It is in a real sense a history for our own times."
Jim Fryth, Labour History Review: "This book is ideal for its purpose. I only wish it had been available in the decades when I was teaching trade union courses."
Manchester TUC Newsletter: "At last a readable and accessible general history of the labour movement... Highly recommended."
Critical and iconoclastic, Comrade or Brother?; traces the history of the British Labour Movement from its beginnings at the onset of industrialisation through its development within a capitalist society, up to the end of the twentieth-century. Written by a leading activist in the labour movement, the book redresses the balance in much labour history writing. It examines the place of women and the influence of racism and sexism as well as providing a critical analysis of the rival ideologies which played a role in the uneven development of the labour movement.
Mary Davis is Professor of Labour History at London Metropolitan University where she heads the Centre for Trade Union Studies and is the Deputy Director of the Working Lives Research Institute. She has written, broadcast and lectured widely on women's history, labour history, imperialism and racism.
The British Working Class in the Twentieth Century: Film, Literature, and Television
John Kirk, Senior Research Fellow at WLRI, published 'The British Working Class in the Twentieth Century: Film, Literature, and Television', February 2009.
Although many writers have insisted on the death of class, and in particular the demise of the working class, The British Working Class in the Twentieth Century: Film Literature and Television draws extensively on the theoretical insights of Raymond Williams and the British cultural studies tradition to challenge suggestions that class is no longer relevant for literary analysis. It examines how the lives and experiences of working-class people have changed over the past century, and how these changes have been depicted and explored in a range of fictional and non-fictional texts.
John Kirk discusses representations of the British working class in a range of writing, from Alan Bleasdale and James Kelman, to Pat Barker and Jeanette Winterton. He also offers a comparative study of two other key periods when the question of class loomed large: the 1930s and the post-war 'age of affluence', as well as looking at how working-class experiences and identities are filtered through ideas of race, national belonging and gender.
The British Working Class in the Twentieth Century: Film, Literature, and Television aims to re-explore and re-engage sites of working-class experience that have been neglected over recent years. It contests many of the assumptions of contemporary cultural theory and will be essential reading for anyone interested in current debates about identity and class.
John Kirk is Senior Research Fellow at the Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University. He is author of Class, Culture and Social Change: On the Trail of the Working Class (2007), and is completing a book on work and identity to be published in 2009.
Research Quality Evaluation - London Met rated top ten
The 2008 RAE - an assessment of the quality of research in the UK - has ranked London Metropolitan amongst the top ten centres for research on European Studies in Britain. Eighty-five per cent of our research was evaluated as being at least internationally recognized, with more than one third being internationally excellent or world class. Working Lives staff were entered in the RAE, as a major element of the London Metropolitan submission in European Studies, reflecting our commitment to co-operative international research on European employment and social issues. See the full results for the RAE 2008 here. And see the HEFCE website for more details: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/.
Electronic Newsletter Launched, February 2009
Want to be at the cutting edge of research on what’s happening at work in the UK and across Europe? In that case, look no further. The WLRI has launched an electronic newsletter to keep you fully updated with all that's new with our work and our latest events. View the first E-Zine online here, and subscribeto get future issues sent straight to your inbox.
‘Across the Great Divide’ - The Globalisation of Call Centres and Trade Union Organisation in India and the UK
Phil Taylor and Ciaron Naidoo spoke at the WLRI on Wednesday 21 January about the globalisation of call centres and prospects for trade union organisation in the UK and India.
Phil Taylor, Professor of Work and Employment Studies at University of Strathclyde (Photo: Ali Mobasser), drew from more than ten years of research on the off-shoring of call centre labour. He outlined the background and context to globalisation, challenging some assumptions and myths, before moving on to some opportunities and barriers to organising call centre workers.
Ciaron Naidoo spoke about his work with MSF and Amicus, predecessors to UNITE, as well as their current campaign to defend jobs in the finance sector call centres.
Profit maximisation and the saving of costs have been the driving force behind the process of Globalisation. Global outsourcing has largely - though not exclusively - been done from English speaking countries, epitomised by the off-shoring of call centres from the UK to India. This has not been a one way process, however; the Global Service Delivery Model has created a system whereby separate parts of a multinational company can operate in different continents, whilst being part of the same overall structure.
"The global map has been redrawn in front of our eyes."
Essentially, argued Taylor, this represents the "carving up of the world into different geographies with different human resources." In India, there are roughly 700,000 workers in the global outsourcing process. Of those, approximately 60 per cent are in ‘voice services’.
Discourses on Globalisation One CEO of HBOS infamously justified their off-shoring policy thus:
"They’re quicker at answering the phones, highly numerate and keen to come to work every day. Staff are highly enthusiastic, and dress well… A lot of them have degrees. The work in the UK is inferior. The quality of the work we see is extremely high."
This explanation fails to mention the obvious reason for off-shoring: the cost of labour in the Global South. There are high levels of anxiety for organised labour concerning the denigration of workers rights and conditions in the UK. In 2002, Amicus calculated that around 200,000 jobs were affected by off-shoring. There is concern over pay, conditions, rights and what is called ‘Whipsawing’ - the fastening of work rates in one centre putting pressure on workers elsewhere.
Even just the threat of off-shoring has been used to increase pressure on workers in the UK. In such an environment, it would seem workers can only resign themselves to such unrestrained competition. On the other hand, the reverse case scenario exists in the Global South where there is a sense of opportunity for middle class graduates.
Opportunities for Labour In both the cases of the Indian and UK government, the assumption is that organised labour is helpless to intervene - either in saving jobs in the north or to organise workers in the Global south. However, Taylor argued:
"Labour union paralysis is neither inevitable nor is it justified."
There have been attempts to both defend jobs in the UK and to organise workers in India. Organisation of labour around these issues locally or globally should not be viewed as mutually exclusive. While it might seem there is an "unbridgeable chasm that divides workers", in fact there are potential common unifying factors that bring call centre workers together.
The Prudential has a call centre in Stirling and Mumbai; both are on the exact same connected system. Such networked spaces suffer from a high vulnerability to disruption from one centre to another. The national shop stewards of one UK bank’s call centre staff have claimed that if they were only to work to contract they would "melt down their operating systems" - the call centres in India would not be able to cope with the extra workload. In addition, whilst workers are separated geographically they’re also bound together in their processes. The work of lean employment is highly pressurised, and the current recession is already impacting on call centres.
Globalisation: a more complex phenomenon Besides, the dynamics of call centre off-shoring is more complex than at first thought. We have not seen a tsunami of call centres going to India, argued Taylor:
"The predictions of the technological determinists were wrong."
There were always going to be restrictions to off-shoring opportunities. Companies were never going to off-shore everything. In fact the UK call centre industry has expanded at the same time as the growth of off-shoring. And the global outsourcing process has met profound difficulties in India - in part due to linguistic abilities of Indian workers. In fact there is a predicted labour shortfall in India; demand is projected to outstrip supply by 2010, claimed Taylor. Added to that, the cost of Labour in India and the associated cost of training has risen significantly. Labour in India is contradictory: Off-shoring should not be seen as an all embracing tsunami, but a complex phenomenon.
Organising possibilities There are organising opportunities in both the UK and India. Ciaron Naidoo and Phil Taylor spoke about those possibilities, particularly drawing on the experience of UNITE the union and its predecessors, MSF and then AMICUS. In 2002 off-shoring was a new phenomenon. The first major round of off-shoring was announced at the Prudential, which declared 850 jobs were to move to Mumbai. The well organised union members decided fight those job losses, so they leaked the story to the press and began a community and national campaign.
As this was the first major off-shoring story, it gained a lot of press, and being a well organised branch, managed to win the commitment of Prudential to a 14 Point Plan. This included commitment to a full and prior consultation without compulsory redundancies, and facilitate re-training. This 14 Point Plan formed the basis of negotiations with other companies and the unions were then able to sign global agreements with a number of different employees in the financial sector which helped to minimise compulsory redundancies. Naidoo argued the banks would have made "a lot more compulsory redundancies" than they have so far.
Also key was not allowing xenophobia to become part of their campaign. The unions were clear that it was about supporting communities in the UK as well as being an issue for workers in India. ILO officers went to India to visit call centres - to show they were being watched. A lot of banks were worried about their brands being damaged by bad publicity. They have also built link with the new union, UNITES in India, for the call centre / BPO industry. They were able to bring UNITES reps to the UK to meet their workplace reps, and managed to gain access to some UK employers (although they were denied such access in their home country).
Some companies have been less worried about their image, and gone ahead with off-shoring - despite research showing their customers are opposed to this. More recently some have changed their strategies to off-shore on a smaller scale, to avoid the headlines that follow large-scale off-shoring. Now that tax payers have a major stake in several large banks, like RBS and Lloyds TSB, the union position is not to accept any more off-shoring of UK jobs. This would be a politically difficult thing for the government to do today, argued Naidoo.
Barriers to organising in India Taylor argued that it is hugely significant that there is now a union in India attempting to organise call centre workers. When HSBC workers were faced with zero per cent pay increase, Indian worker held a protest in India. Workers there have a lot to lose, so this was a "tremendous example of international solidarity". But there are several hurdles to organising for UNITES India: dismissals of activists - ‘malcontents’; middle class background of some youth who have professional aspirations for career advancement; the high attrition rates. All of these are real obstacles. However, although the workers have been promised a professional career, but that guarantee contrasts with the reality of the extremely pressurised, mundane work, ‘unbelievable’ travel-to-work times, health and safety issues, claustrophobic working environment, raising a blue flag to go to the toilet, examples of bonded labour, and so on.
The debate on off-shoring has been taken over by the recent financial crisis, argued Taylor. The off-shoring process is likely to continue but in the call centre back office staff. And a focus on automation - getting the customers "to do the jobs themselves". There are real possibilities and potential for growth of union organisation in India and the UK - as well as across borders, concluded Taylor.
A lively and informed debate followed. Join us at the next WLRI TU seminar, for a discussion on 'Trade Union Mergers; rationalisation or opportunism?' on February 18th. For more information, go here.
Undocumented migrants face arduous path
Research across seven European countries has revealed that migrant workers are facing increasingly tight restrictions on their quality of life.
The research was publicised at a major conference on undocumented migrants held at London Metropolitan University. 100 participants from the UK and six other EU member states gathered for the event.
the reasons why migrants seek work in Europe without proper authorisation;
their working conditions and experiences;
the various ways in which legally working and residing migrants can fall into irregularity;
the ways in which undocumented or irregular migrant workers may gain legal status; and
the continued demand for irregular migrant labour, and its impact on labour markets.
The research concluded that in all seven countries there is a trend towards tightening the controls over family reunion, restricting economic migration through quota or special permits systems and containing ‘illegality’. These are accompanied by restrictions on freedom of movement and on the right to work. In all seven countries the researchers observed a growing restrictive regime in relation to welfare rights and to social provision in relation to undocumented migrants, with increasing emphasis on the denial of basic rights, including healthcare rights.
At the same time the researchers find that these restrictive regimes have not halted undocumented migration, indeed in most of the seven countries, the numbers of undocumented workers appear to have increased. With testimonies taken from more than 200 workers who are or who have been undocumented, and with interviews with national and European experts in migration, the researchers have concluded that the measures taken by the seven states have meant that workers without papers have been driven into the most marginal and dangerous jobs, but that the imperative for them to seek work makes even these difficult conditions ‘acceptable’.
Download the full press release here:
WLRI to co-ordinate a 34-country team researching trade union action on discrimination
There are laws to combat discrimination based on gender, race, religion or belief, disability, sexual orientation or age in all EU Member States and trade unions not only have a legal obligation to comply with these laws but have to ensure that they combat discrimination in their policies and practices. However little is known of what impact these laws have had on the ways that trade unions operate. This 34-country project, which is co-ordinated by the Working Lives Research Institute, seeks to investigate what trade unions are doing to combat discrimination. The project will focus on all 27-Member States, but in addition will also cover Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Turkey.
The research tender was commissioned by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities. The Commission will play an active role in the project, by co-ordinating a project steering group on which members of the Commission and representatives from European trade unions will sit. The WLRI team will also carry out the research in close collaboration and consultation with European representatives of trade unions.
The WLRI research team includes a number of thematic experts who will advise the 34 national experts in relation to race, religion or belief, age, disability and sexual orientation. National experts will conduct interviews in all 34 countries, collecting information at various levels of the trade unions about their understandings of discrimination, their policies and their practices.
The final report to the Commission will be published in three languages. WLRI will also organise a major international conference to which leading trade union officers will be invited.
Dr Sonia McKay has been appointed as an Academic Peer Reviewer in respect of an Inquiry into the Underlying Causes of Construction Fatal Accidents. The Inquiry is Chaired by Rita Donaghy. The two other Peer Reviewers are Professor Andrew Hale, Delft University of Technology and Professor David Walters, Cardiff University. The work of the Academic Peer Reviewers commenced in January 2009 and will be completed by April 2009.
Fundamental Rights Agency funds WLRI to research fight against racism
What are unions and employers in Europe doing to fight racism in the workplace? The EU agency, the Fundamental Rights Agency, has just commissioned the Working Lives Research Institute to give an answer to this key question.
The Vienna-based agency has given the WLRI the job of carrying out a 27-EU Member State survey of the responses of employers and trade unions to the 2000 Racial Equality Directive. This Directive has been transposed into law in every European country and in theory it should enable trade unions and employers to come to agreements challenging racism and helping foster real equality. But how many unions and employers know about the measure? Is the Directive doing the job? How could it do the job better?
The WLRI will build up a complete European picture through working closely with a network of regional and national experts. These experts, some of whom are WLRI staff members, will carry out interviews with unions, employers' organisations, individual employers and experts and write national reports, which the WLRI will compile into a European report that will be published by the FRA towards the end of 2009.
For further information about the project please contact Jawad Botmeh at the WLRI: j.botmeh@londonmet.ac.uk
'The New Gold Rush: the new multinationals and the commodification of public sector work'
'The New Gold Rush: the new multinationals and the commodification of public sector work'
Over the past few years a new breed of multinationals has arrived, almost unnoticed, on the scene. Like early capitalist adventurers, they have found a rich new source of wealth to exploit. But this seam of gold is to be found, not in the mountains of California or the depths of Africa but at the very heart of the welfare states of the developed world.
This important collection of essays anatomises the emergence of the 'public services industry' and analyses the way in which government services have been commodified so that they can be privatised or outsourced.
It charts the growth of the global companies that have sprung up to supply these services and documents the devastating impact on workers, including work intensification, casualisation, loss of union protection and erosion of occupational identities.
It also explores the changing relationship between the state and the private sector and the implications for democracy of developments which transform citizens into shoppers.
Required reading for anyone who wants to know what privatisation means for workers.
Fiona Colgan, Co-Director of the Comparative Organisation and Equality Research Centre and Sue Bond, Emma Hollywood and Colin Lindsay of Napier University, Edinburgh have started work on a research project entitled ‘Integration in the Workplace.’ The project team successfully bid for and won funding of £40,000 for the research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The research aims to examine the disadvantages that some employees may experience in terms of recruitment, promotion or advancement because of their age, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or because they are migrant workers. It also aims to identify the policies and practices developed by good practice employers to counter these disadvantages and to promote integration within the workplace. The report will be presented to the EHRC in April, 2009.
This research on the new equality strands, builds on COERC’s track record of research in the equalities area, including its successful Higher Education European Social Funded research (£79,500, 2004-2006) on sexual orientation following the introduction of the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (2003). A range of research outputs have been produced from the HE ESF funded project ‘Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Workers: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace.’ The most recent output will be an article by Fiona Colgan, Tessa Wright, Chris Creegan and Aidan McKearney in the Human Resource Management Journal in 2009, ‘Equality and diversity in the public services: moving forward on lesbian, gay and bisexual equality?’
WLRI Lunchtime Seminar Series 2009 - Migration, globalisation and class
The WLRI lunchtime seminar series starts again in February. This year the theme is ‘Migration, globalisation and class’, covering some of the key areas of research for the WLRI. Once again, we will be hosting prominent experts in their fields such as Prof. Les Back (University of London), Dr. Vassilis Monastiriotis (London School of Economics), Prof. Allan Williams (ISET), Dr Gordana Uzelac (DASS), Marek Kazmierski (Feltham Youth Offenders’ Institution), Nick Scott-Flynn (British Red Cross), and Dr Michal Garapich (CRONEM).
The series begins with a look at "Migration and Development: the case of Albania", with research presented by Dr Juli Vulnetari, from the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex and Dr. Nick Mai, from the Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET), London Metropolitan University. This seminar will be held on Wednesday, 11 February instead of the 4 February, the first Wednesday of the month as it clashes with an international migration conference that WLRI is organising on that day.
The format of this year’s seminars will follow last year’s: the speaker has roughly 20 minutes to introduce their research, and the seminar is then open for questions and comments. Last year’s lunchtime seminar series, titled ‘Social Political Identities and Tackling Workplace Discrimination’, included some lively debates and discussions among academics, practitioners and students alike. Last year’s debates included organising sex workers, forced labour and modern day slavery, tackling homophobia in the workplace, and locating migrant workers in debates around racism.
The lunchtime seminars are held on the first Wednesday of the month, but check the full programme for exceptions. They include a sandwich lunch with tea and coffee at 12.30pm - providing an opportunity to meet colleagues, contacts and friends - before a prompt 12.45pm start, to finish at 2.00pm. The seminars are all held in room JS1-41 (the ‘function room’) and once again they’re free and open to everybody - so invite your friends and forward on to your email lists. Spaces at the seminars are limited, however, so please let us know if you intend to come. Just email Max Watson <m.watson@londonmet.ac.uk> to book a place at any of the seminars, or just call: 020 7320 3042.
We look forward to seeing you on the first Wednesday of every month in 2009.
Trade Union Seminar Series 2009
The Working Lives Research Institute Trade Union Seminars continue in 2009 following last year’s popular series. These seminars bring academics, trade unionists, students and activists together in a forum of open debate to discuss some of the important issues facing the labour movement today.
Some of the issues to be discussed in the forthcoming series include Equal Pay, Trade Union Mergers, Tripartism, Social Movement Unionism and Trade Union Internationalism. These sessions will all be introduced by well known trade unionists and supportive academics with respected research records in their field.
Mary Davis, Professor of Labour History, and Deputy Director of WLRI, said:
‘These seminars provide a much needed opportunity for a theoretical and practical assessment and discussion of some of the key issues facing the trade union movement today. Both the academic and the activist community can learn from such discussions and it is in this spirit that we hope that there will be increasing participation in this forum.’
Phil Taylor, University of Strathclyde, will be speaking with Ciaran Naidoo, Press Officer for Unite the Union, about the offshoring of call centres and business services to India. In this Seminar, ‘Across the great divide’, the globalisation of Call centres and organisation in India and the UK’, Phil Taylor and Ciaran Naidoo will discuss some common myths surrounding globalisation and assess recent attempts to organise call centres. For more information, see the full programme and watch this space for updates.
Last year, we hosted seminars about Women Trade Unionists; The Equality Bill; Difficulties with Union Learning; Organising, Militancy and Revitalisation of the RMT; Globalisation, Transportation and Labour; Individualised Industrial Relations and ‘Vulnerability’ at Work; Ten years of the TUC Organising Academy; and Organising migrant workers, all introduced by leading trade unionists and researchers. For more information on the 2008 Trade Union seminar series, including audio recordings of the introductions, go here.
The seminars are on the third Wednesday of every month, with occasional exceptions - please check the programme for details. This year, they’re held in room JS2-75 (second floor, turn right, follow the signs). They are free, open to all, and there is no need to register. Invite your workmates and contacts - forward this email on to them and put the dates in your diary. Not only are they a good chance to hear prominent labour movement activists and academics speak about some of the more important issues concerning the modern labour movement, they’re also a great opportunity to meet colleagues from WLRI. Come and put a face to those names you’ve not had a chance to meet yet, and join the debate.
Wednesday, 5.00pm - 7.00pm London Metropolitan University Room JS2-75 31 Jewry Street London EC3N 2EY
ESRC Collaborative (CASE) +3 year PhD Studentship: Collective trade union organisation among professional and white-collar managerial workers 
Both seminar series continued during February and March, and the recordings of all introductions have all been made available for downloading from our audio page. In February, Dr Juli Vullnetari, Research Fellow, Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), University of Sussex and Dr. Nick Mai, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET), introduced "Migration and Development: the case of Albania". And on March 4th, Prof. Les Back, Deputy Head of Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London gave a seminar on "Obama and the Politics of Hope". Both the recordings and Les Back's Powerpoint presentation have been made available here. 
Edited by Dr Sonia McKay, of WLRI, Refugees, Recent Migrants and Employment: Challenging Barriers and Exploring Pathways was published in October 2008 by Routledge, and launched in February at the conference on Undocumented Workers' Transitions. 
Mary Davis, deputy director of Working Lives, published a revised, updated and expanded edition of this classic feminist account of British labour history 'Comrade or Brother?: A History of the British Labour Movement' in Feb 2009, with Pluto Press. 
John Kirk, Senior Research Fellow at WLRI, published 'The British Working Class in the Twentieth Century: Film, Literature, and Television', February 2009. 
The 2008 RAE - an assessment of the quality of research in the UK - has ranked London Metropolitan amongst the top ten centres for research on European Studies in Britain. Eighty-five per cent of our research was evaluated as being at least internationally recognized, with more than one third being internationally excellent or world class. Working Lives staff were entered in the RAE, as a major element of the London Metropolitan submission in European Studies, reflecting our commitment to co-operative international research on European employment and social issues. See the full results for the RAE 2008 here. And see the HEFCE website for more details: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/. 
What are unions and employers in Europe doing to fight racism in the workplace? The EU agency, the Fundamental Rights Agency, has just commissioned the Working Lives Research Institute to give an answer to this key question. 
The Working Lives Research Institute Trade Union Seminars continue in 2009 following last year’s popular series. These seminars bring academics, trade unionists, students and activists together in a forum of open debate to discuss some of the important issues facing the labour movement today.