2009 May - August
WLRI FP7 success
WLRI has been successful in winning a major grant from the EU FP7 programme for a study of the Impacts of Urbanisation and Human Mobility on Coastal Environments. The project is being led at London Metropolitan by WLRI/ISET member Allan Williams, in collaboration with Graeme Evans (Cities) and Graham Walters (Business School). The project will model the impacts of human activity on environmental systems, with the aim of contributing to the development of more sustainable and equitable policies for coastal areas. London Metropolitan will be responsible for the UK contribution to this eight country four year study, and will undertake research in the Thames Gateway and Portsmouth areas.
The project SECOA is concerned with evaluating the environmental and social effects of environmental change on Coastal Areas. The project will be valued at circa £740,000 pounds for Londonmet, shared between the WLRI, where Allan will the overall lead coordinator, Cities, and the Business School..
Union Learning (CPD) celebrates first graduates
The first cohort of students in the Certificate in Continuing Professional Development in Union Learning (CPD) graduate in June. A celebration event will see seven students completing their learning leaving six to continue onto the next module in October when they will be joined by new students. The course was supported by the University’s Development Fund and we are delighted that it is now proving to be successful. It was designed in consultation with trade unions and aimed to locate union learning within wider union organising and bargaining agendas as well as the history and tradition of trade union education.
The CPD recruits every semester and all students study 4 modules:
- The Struggle for Workers’ Education
- Globalisation, Change at Work and the Role of Union Learning
- Ways of Learning
- The Learning Agenda: organising, communicating, bargaining
Students currently participating in the course range from those who have degrees (and who are planning further HE study) to those without any formal qualifications at all. Two students are working their way through Level 2 programmes elsewhere. This cohort is typical of all adult education classes - students with a diverse range of educational experiences and needs which the tutor must take into account.
By the time students have worked their way through the modules they have engaged with challenging academic readings, conducted research and presented it and worked in ‘problem-solving’ groups. The last session saw students presenting case studies based upon their own experiences designed to demonstrate the wider impact of learning in the workplace and beyond. One visitor from the TUC said she was ‘amazed at the quality of the work and the way that the group was working together’. In fact the standard is so good that Working Lives hopes to publish these in the near future.
One Railworker sent (an unprompted) email following the presentation of his case study:
‘Here’s just a little feedback from my first intrusion into the world of academia. Yesterday left me feeling a real sense of pride and achievement. To have done my research, presented myself well and handed in my first ever written work to be read by a University tutor after initially feeling quite nervous. I left feeling confident that I stood tall amongst my peers. A definite plus is how the course is delivered. Thank you’
The CPD in union learning is now recruiting for October 2009 and details can be
found on the Working Lives web-site. Contact
Cilla Ross or Sian Moore for details.
Fundamental Rights Agency project hits milestone
Sonia McKay and
Steve Jefferys submitted a 30,000 word Interim Report of a European-wide survey in Vienna to the Fundamental Rights Agency on Tuesday 12 May 2009.
This study is researching the awareness among Europe’s trade unions and employers of the 2000 Racial Equality Directive outlawing discrimination on grounds of race or ethnicity (see
here for more). It graphically estimated the state of awareness throughout Europe and raises several issues about the effectiveness of the Directive.
In each of the 27 EU member states national experts have been contracted by the WLRI to interview both social partners, employers’ associations and trade union federations as well as individual employers and trade unions. In some countries they are also supplementing these interviews with the views of NGOs that work in the field.
The national experts have a target of 150 interviews with both sides of industry, and in just two months have now reached 127 employer interviews, 144 trade union interviews and 16 NGO interviews - very close to the full target.
The national experts have also each written a national report, which was summarised in the Interim Report. These documents are currently confidential to the FRA, but are expected to be put on the FRA website with the Final Report in the first half of 2010.
The interviews and reports are all being coded and inputted into 'NVIVO' to enable sophisticated analysis to take place of the whole data set.
The next major output of the project will be the 100-page Final Report, to be completed in July - and it too will be published in 2010.
Good jobs for good services? The impact of privatisation of public services
The final conference of
the PIQUE project entitled "Good jobs for good services? The impact of privatisation of public services on employment, productivity and service quality" took place in Vienna on 24 of April 2009. It was organised by Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt (FORBA) and marked the end of PIQUE, the three year project which has been funded under the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme.
The PIQUE project investigated the relationship between employment, productivity and the quality of public services in the process of liberalisation and privatisation and covering four sectors - electricity, postal services, local public transport and health services/hospitals - and six European countries - Austria, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Sweden and the UK.
The conference was in English and German with simultaneous translations. The morning session presented the main research findings and the afternoon session consisted of parallel sectoral workshops for an in-depth discussion. The conference concluded with a final panel bringing together academic experts, representatives from the European Commission, the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), the Vienna Chamber of Labour and other organisations.
Providing a platform for dialogue and stakeholder discussion, the PIQUE conference was well attended and attracted many questions from the audience. For more information about the project and the conference you can visit PIQUE’s website at:
www.pique.at or contact
Anna Paraskevopoulou.
Labour Research Department archives at TUC library
The PDF file is at
www.londonmet.ac.uk/library/m40330_3.pdf and covers the institutional papers. It is hoped that Part 2, covering documents produced by other organisations, will be completed in the summer.
A new Source Note to our housing collections has also been circulated to the University’s Cities Institute and other relevant departments. The Note can be found on
our website (pdf download).
Restructuring is bad for workers' health
The Working Lives Research Institute is hosting a one-day seminar on the effects on health of restructuring on Monday 6th July in Central London.
The seminar is a continuation of the 12 month HIRES restructuring project, the final publication of which can be found
here (pdf download).
Change at work, particularly during the present financial situation, presents employers, trade unions and health practitioners with some very difficult decisions. While the health of employees ought to be paramount to an employer, restructuring is often necessary and it affects both those displaced and those so-called ‘survivors’ remaining with the company. However, despite the profound implications of restructuring, its impacts upon the health of workers is a neglected area of study and this seminar aims to bring together people from government ministries, companies, trade unions and academic life to examine and discuss this vital issue.
Chaired by
Dr Greg Thomson from UNISON, the event promises to be very informative and includes guest speakers from a range of companies and professions, including
Professor Steve Jefferys from the Working Lives Research Institute, Professor Thomas Kieselbach (University of Bremen), Dr Margaret Samuel (EDF), Dr Richard Heron (AstraZeneca - BP), the former HR Director of Ericsson Elisabeth Armarth, Dr. Claude Emmanuel Triomphe (ASTREES Paris) and Professor David Walters (Cardiff University). For more info contact
David Tarren and download the HIRES invitation and the full agenda for the seminar here:
European Conference on Workforce ageing
On the 11th of June the WLRI is hosting a European Conference/Workshop on ‘Innovative Approaches to Workforce Ageing’.
The conference will take place in the
Women’s Library from 9.30 - 16.30 and is centred around preliminary results based on a
two-year-ESF Article 6 funded project: ESF6 CIA - (see also
www.esf6cia.eu).
It presents a unique opportunity for employers, managers, trade unionists, researchers and all interested in the management of demographic change to exchange good practices and debate key issues.
The aim of the conference is: to exchange good employment practices across sectors, regions and countries; to stimulate innovative thinking in addressing the challenges related to demographic change; and to discuss the management of workforce ageing.
The first half of the day will include presentations on workforce ageing in the current economic climate and critical success factors to the management of demographic change while the second half of the day will focus on flexible, smarter working. Throughout the day existing good practices will be presented based on organisational case studies in the East of England and across a range of European countries. There will be time for discussions and networking.
Part 1 of the catalogue of the Labour Research Department archive has now been completed and is available on the TUC Library Collections website.