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Last updated: 08/04/08

Dr Anna Pollert

Position (Former Staff Member)

Professor of Sociology of Work

Qualifications

  • PhD Department of Sociology, University of Bristol.
  • BSc Join Honours Sociology and Psychology, University of Bristol.

Background/Career

Anna’s career has been concerned with the experience of work, class, gender and workplace relations, and trade unions and labour representation. She studied at Bristol University, where she wrote her PhD and first book on women’s experience of working in a local tobacco factory. During the 1970s she taught in a number of associated areas in Further Education colleges and at Bristol Polytechnic, including sociology, women’s studies, trade union studies and industrial relations. In the mid 1980s, she was a researcher at Birmingham Trade Union Resource Centre, where she investigated sexual and racial discrimination on the Youth Training Scheme, as well as broader policies associated with creating a ‘flexible workforce’. In 1986 she joined the Industrial Relations Research Unit at Warwick University, where she was Principal Research Fellow until 1998, when she took up a Professorship at the University of Greenwich. She joined London Metropolitan University Working Lives Research Institute in February 2004.

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Research interests

Anna’s research has evolved over a number of overlapping themes, broadly informed by concerns with the experience of work, democratic representation at work, social equality and justice, social change and comparative labour relations. The gender dimension is integral to these perspectives. There are four main themes:

  • Labour organisation; workplace experience and consciousness; individualism and collectivism; trade union change; informal workplace relations; the non-unionised workforce, social exclusion and routes to inclusion.
  • Gender relations at work; the relationship between class and gender; the sexual division of labour; the family-employment interface; comparative gender relations and equal opportunities.
  • Employment and labour market change and policy, both at government and enterprise level; employment deregulation and re-regulation; comparative employment and industrial relations systems; organisational change, management strategy and employee response.
  • Social transformation; post-Communist transformation in terms of history, political economy, emerging social and employment relations and organisational change; democracy; and questions raised by European Union enlargement and global economic integration.

Recent and Current Research Projects

  • 1. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, June 2003 - February 2004, Comparative Research Project on Gender, Work and Employment in Ten Candidate Countries of Central Eastern Europe. This project involves ten country reports and a synthesis report on the labour market position and working conditions of women in ten EU Accession Countries - eight having joined in May 2004 (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and two Balkan countries (Bulgaria and Romania), which are expected to join in 2007.
    The research uses national Labour Force Surveys and other data to explore issues such as gender and labour market participation, employment change, vertical and horizontal segregation, the pay gap and working conditions. It also compares local data with the Foundation’s own survey carried out in 2002 on gender and working conditions. Several findings stand out: the previously high female labour force participation has significantly declined, and many women have simply disappeared from the official labour force; sexual segregation is broadly similar to that in the EU-15;and the pay gap is wider than in the EU, and has only narrowed minimally in a few countries in the past five years (although the expectations were that it was the same and has been steadily narrowing over the past decade). The findings in general are that capitalism has eroded much of the progressive element of the gender order legacy of Communism.
    The research has two main features: a comparison with Western Europe, and a historical perspective to show the trajectory of change from Communism through the changes of the past fifteen years of capitalist transformation. A further dimension is national diversity, although no consistent patterns have been found, for example between regional blocks of countries.
  • 2. ESRC: February 2003 - April 2005, The Unorganised Worker: Routes to Support and Views on Representation. This project explores the experience of problems at work and sources of support and advice of non-unionised workers in Britain. It explores ‘concerns’ at work - what these are, how they are perceived, whether any action is taken or not - and wider issues of individual employment rights and their enforcement. Non-unionised workers’ use of union help-lines, statutory bodies such as Acas and the Employment Tribunal system, various support and advice agencies, such as Citizens Advice Bureau and law centres, and wider social networks are examined. The research involves both a telephone survey of 500 workers and qualitative interviews of a smaller number accessed through the survey respondents, the Citizens Advice Bureaux and other informal channels. Wider attitudes towards individual and collective representation and broader social engagement are also explored.

Working Paper 1 Technical and Methodology Report

Working Paper 2 Theoretical and Methodological Issues

Working Paper 3 Mapping the Problems

Working Paper 4 Examining the Problems of Unrepresented Workers in Britain

Working Paper 5 What do Unrepresented Workers do about Problems at Work?

Working Paper 6 The Unorganised Worker: Problems at Work and Routes to Resolution with the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Working Paper 7 Collectivism and Views on Trade Unions among Unrepresented Workers with Problems at Work

  • 3. Higher Education European Social Fund (Research into Equal Opportunities in the Labour Market) and Acas, May 2004 - April 2006, The Experience of Ethnic Minority Workers in the Hotel and Catering Industry: Routes to Support and Advice on Workplace Problems. This project focuses on a sector with high black and ethnic minority work participation. It will comprise in-depth interviews among several ethnic groups, including first and second generation British minorities, and recent migrants, providing a mixture of experiences in this ethnically heterogeneous sector. It will be conducted in urban areas with significant ethnic minority populations: London, the West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, the North West and East Midlands.In the small-business sector, employers will also be informants, and where appropriate, family members. The interviews will identify labour market histories and problems at work, including discrimination, pay, working hours and other work-related issues. Among the support and advice resources used, it will explore both institutional support, such as Acas, the CRE, trade unions, Citizens' Advice Bureaux and community assocations, and wider social resources available, such as family networks, friends and informal community support. Where action has been taken over a problem, the route taken and outcome will be traced. The project will highlight key policy issues regarding complex factors behind social exclusion as well as those improving social inclusion.

Publications

Books

  • Girls, Wives, Factory Lives, 1981, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
  • Farewell to Flexibility? (Editor) 1991, Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Fordism and Flexibility: Divisions and Change (Co-editor with N.Gilbert and R.Burrows ) 1992, London: Macmillan.
  • Adios a la Flexibilidad? (Editor) 1994 , Spain: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguidad Social, Informes y Estudios (Spanish translation of ‘Farewell to Flexibility).
  • Transformation at Work in the New Market Economies of Central Eastern Europe 1999, London: Sage.

    Selected Refereed Journal Articles

  • ‘Dismantling Flexibility’, Capital and Class, No.34, pp. 42-75, Spring 1988.
  • ‘The "Flexible Firm": Fixation or Fact?’, Work, Employment and Society, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.281-316, September 1988.
  • 'L'Entreprise flexible: réalité ou obsession?' Sociologie du Travail, No. 1-89, pp.75-106, January 1989.
  • 'The Single European Market, Multinationals and Concentration: the Case of the Food Manufacturing Industry', Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No.3, pp279-298, 1993.
  • 'Privatisation in Transition: the Czech Experience' with Irena Hradecká Industrial Relations Journal, 25:1, pp. 53-63, March 1994.
  • ‘Women's Employment and Service Sector Transformation in Central Eastern Europe: Case Studies in Retail in the Czech Republic', Work, Employment and Society, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 629 - 655, December 1995.
  • ‘Gender and Class Revisited: Or, the Poverty of "Patriarchy"’ Sociology Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 639 - 659, November 1996.
  • ‘The Revival of Czech Social Democracy: A New Turn in Central Eastern Europe?’ Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, 1996, No.54, pp. 55-63.
  • ‘Trade Unionism in the Czech Republic’ Labour Focus on Eastern Europe 1996, No.55, pp. 6-38.
  • ‘The Transformation of trade unionism in the capitalist and democratic restructuring of the Czech Republic’ European Journal of Industrial Relations. Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 203 - 228, June 1997.
  • ‘The Sexual Division of Labour in Process Manufacturing: Economic Restructuring, Training and "Women’s Work"’ with J. Flecker and P. Meil, European Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 7 - 34, March 1998.
  • ‘Trade Unionism in Transition in Central Eastern Europe’ European Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 209-234, June 1999.
  • ‘Class Dismissed? Labour and Trade Unions in the Czech Republic, 1989 - 1999’, Emergo - Journal of Transition, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 6 - 23, 1999.
  • ‘Ten Years of Post-Communist Central Eastern Europe: Labour’s Tenuous Foothold in the Regulation of the Employment Relationship’, Economic and Industrial Democracy: an International Journal, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 183 - 210, May 2000.
  • ‘The Czech Labour Movement a Decade after 1989’, Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, No. 66, pp. 8 - 33, November 2000.
  • ‘Gender Relations, Equal Opportunities and Women in Transition in Eastern Europe’ Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, No. 68, pp. 4 - 49, Spring 2001.
  • ‘Women, Work and Equal Opportunities in post-Communist transition’, Work, Employment and Society, June 2003, vol. 17 (2) 331 - 357.
  • ‘Gender, Transformation and Employment in Ten Central Eastern European Countries’, Forthcoming, European Journal of Industrial Relations, July 2005.

  • ‘The Unorganised Worker, the Decline in Collectivism and the New Hurdles to Individual Employment Rights’, Industrial Law Journal, September 2005, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp.217 - 238.

    Selected Book Chapters

  • 'Women, Gender Relations and Wage Labour' in E.Gamarnikow, D.Morgan, J.Purvis and D.Taylorson, (eds.), 1983, Gender, Class and Work, London: Heinemann.
  • 'Ethnic Minorities and the Youth Training Scheme' in C. Benn, and J. Fairley, (eds.), 1986, Challenging the MSC, London: Pluto Press.
  • 'The Mystique of Flexibility' in Trade Unions and the Economy: Into the 1990s, Employment Institute and the TUC ,1990, London: The Employment Institute.
  • 'Conceptions of British Employment Restructuring in the 1980s' in I.Varcoe, M.McNeil, and S.Yearley, (eds.), 1990, Deciphering Science and Technology, London: Macmillan.
  • 'Introduction' in A.Pollert (ed.), 1991, Farewell to Flexibility? Oxford: Blackwell.
  • 'The Orthodoxy of Flexibility' in A.Pollert (ed.), 1991, Farewell to Flexibility? Oxford: Blackwell.
  • 'A Decade of Transformation? Labour Market Flexibility and Work Organisation in the United Kingdom' (with H. Ramsay and H. Rainbird) in O.E.C.D, 1992, New Directions in Work Organisation: the Industrial Relations Response, Paris: O.E.C.D.
  • 'Pour une approche sectorelle, ou comment en finir avec les secteurs invisibles de l'emploi' in S. Erbès-Séguin (ed.), 1994, L'Emploi: Dissonances et Defis. Sociologues et Economistes Européens en Debat, Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, Logiques Sociales.
  • ‘A Sectoral Approach: A Mode of Overcoming Invisibilities in Employment’, 1995, in S. Erbès-Seguin (ed.) Beschäftingung und Arbeit eine Dsikussion zwischen Ökonomie und Soziologie Berlin: edition sigma, rainer bohn verlag.
  • ‘Team work on the assembly line: contradictions and the dynamics of union resilience’ in P. Ackers, C.Smith and P.Smith (eds.), 1996, The New Workplace and Trade Unionism, London: Routledge.
  • ‘From Acquiscence to Assertion? Trade Unionism in the Czech Republic 1989 - 1995’ in G. Schienstock, P. Thompson, and F. Traxler (eds.), 1997, Industrial Relations between Command and Market, New York: Nova.
  • ‘Labour and Trade Unionism in the Czech Republic 1989 - 1998’ in S. Crowley and D. Ost (eds.), 2001, Workers after Workers’ States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Text-Book reproductions of Writing

  • ‘Girls, Wives, Factory Lives’ in E. Huckle (ed) 1983 A New Introductory Reader in Sociology, London: Harrap.
  • ‘The Flexible Firm’ extract from Work, Employment and Society, Vol. 2, 1988, in Open Business School Human Resource Strategies B884, 1992, Block 1 Unit 1, Open Business School, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
  • ‘Shop floor culture: Resistance and Control’, extract from Girls, Wives, Factory Lives, in J. Allen, P. Braham and P. Lewis (eds.), 1992, Political and Economic Forms of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity with Open University Press.
  • Extract from Girls, Wives, Factory Lives in A. Giddens (ed), (1992, 1995) Human Societies: An Introductory Reader in Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • ‘Feminist Principles (3): Research for Women’: pp 5 - 9, Girls, Wives, Factory Lives, in I. Marsh, R. Campbell and M. Keating (eds.) 1998, Part IV, Sociological Research, Classic and Contemporary Readings in Sociology, London: Prentice Hall.
  • Extract from ‘Dismantling Flexibility’ Capital and Class, No.34 1988, in J. Bryson, N. Henry, D, Keeble and R.Martin (eds.) 1999, The Economic Geography Reader, Chichester: John Wiley.
  • ‘Ten Years of Post-Communist Central Eastern Europe: Labour’s Tenuous Foothold in the Regulation of the Employment Relationship’, Economic and Industrial Democracy Vol. 21 No. 2, in J. Kelly (ed.) 2002, Industrial Relations: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, Vol. 1, pp. 362 - 385, London: Routledge.

    Periodical Articles and Reports

  • ‘Girls, Wives, Factory Lives’, New Society, 22 October 1981, Vol. 58, No.988.
  • ‘The Challenge for Trade Unionism: Sectoral Change, "Poor Work" and Organising the Unorganised’, Socialist Register 1996, pp. 150-173.
  • ‘Industrial Relations in the Czech Republic’, European Industrial Relations Review, No. 296, September 1998, pp.19-24.
  • Good for Competitiveness, Good for Women? The Equal Opportunities Dimensions of Organisational Change, 1999, Juliet Webster and Anna Pollert, Paper prepared for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Dublin, Ireland.
  • ‘Ten Years On: The Weakness of the Labour Movement in Post-Communist Central Eastern Europe’ Employee Relations Review, No. 15, November 2000, pp. 22 - 27.
  • ‘Privatisation and Labour Movements in Central Eastern Europe’ International Union Rights Journal, October 2001.

  • Refereed Working Papers/Pamphlets

  • Unequal Opportunities: Racial Discrimination and the Youth Training Scheme, 1985, Birmingham: TURC Publishing, (50 pages, pamphlet).
  • The "Flexible Firm": A Model in Search of Reality (or a Policy in Search of a Practice?), 1987, Warwick Paper in Industrial Relations, Number 19, Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick.
  • Equal Opportunities and Positive Action in Britain: Three Case Studies 1992 (with T. Rees) Warwick Paper in Industrial Relations, Number 42, Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick.

    Selected Invited Lectures/Plenaries

  • Conference of the Centre for Research on Work and Society, York University, Canada, 2-5 November 1995, Service Sector Revolutions: Dilemmas and Opportunities for Labour, Plenary lecture, Canadian Auto Workers’ Conference Centre, Port Elgin, Ontario, keynote speech: ‘The Service Sector, ‘Poor Work’ and Trade Unionism: The Spectre of Britain.’
  • International Centre for Industrial Relations (CERI), Florence, June 1998, Symposium: the Challenges of the Social Dimension of the EU in the Face of the Enlargement to Central and Eastern European Countries ‘Industrial Relations in the Countries of Central Eastern Europe’.
  • LASAIRE (Laboratoire Social D’Actions d’Innovation de Reflexions et d’Echanges’, 23-24 November 1998, Palais de Congrès de Lyon, Lyon, France, Fifth Biennial Europe-Work-Employment Conference, ‘Enlargement in its Social and Economic Aspects’.
  • Otto Brenner Stiftung Trade Unions and Industrial Relations in Central and Eastern Europe 14-17 March 1999, Berlin, Introductory Address and Moderator, ‘Tripartism: A Model for the Transformation States’.
    Institute of Public Affairs, Warsaw, Conference, ‘David or Goliath? Trade Unions and the Workers’ Movement in East-Central Europe after Communism’ 27-29 May 1999, National School of Public Administration, Warsaw, ‘Class Dismissed? Labour and Trade Unions in the Czech Republic 1989-1999’.
  • Information Exchange with Central Eastern Europe Programme, Summer School 18-21 October 1999, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Dublin, Ireland, Equal Opportunities in Employment, ‘Equal Opportunities, East and West’.
  • British Universities Industrial Relations Association, Inaugural Conference on Marxism Study Group, 10 February 2000, Manchester Metropolitan University, ‘Gender and Class Revisited’.
  • European Integration and Employment in Central Eastern Europe, International Conference, Rome, Luiss (Liberal Universita Internazionale degli Studi Sociali, Centro per lo Studio delle Relazioni Industriali), 26 May 2000, Conference Commentator.
  • New Divisions in Europe, London European Research Centre, University of North London, 20 - 21 October 2000, ‘What are the prospects for the establishment and maintenance of stable democratic states?’
  • The Sociology of Work: Current Problems and Future Possibilities, University of Sunderland and Polity Press launch of Myths at Work (H. Bradley, M. Erickson, C, Stephenson, S. Williams), 27 October 2000, ‘Gender and work: the changing politics of the sociology of work’.
    Public Lecture, Central European University, Programme on Gender and Culture, Budapest, March 23 2001 ‘Gender Relations, Equal Opportunities and Women in Transition in Central Eastern Europe’.
  • Déjà vu? New Worlds of Work, International Conference on 10th anniversary of FORBA, (Working Life Research Centre, Vienna), in cooperation with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture and Wissenschaftszentrum Wien (WZW), 18 - 20 October 2001, Vienna, ‘Gender and Transition in Central Eastern Europe’.
  • Hungary in Europe: The Coming Decade, Conference of the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Association with University College London (SSEES - School of Slavonic and East European Studies), 2nd November 2001, ‘British Perspectives on Gender’.
  • LASAIRE (Laboratoire Social D’Actions d’Innovation de Reflexions et d’Echanges), 17 - 18 October 2002, Palais de Congrès de Lyon, Lyon, France, Seventh Biennial Europe, Employment, Enlargement and Deepening Conference, ‘European Enlargement and Industrial Relations in Central Eastern Europe’.
  • Organisation Resources Counselors, Inc, International Social and Labour Affairs Forum, Conference 14th November 2002, Brussels, ‘Industrial Relations Background in Four Accession Countries to the EU: the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia’.
  • International Employment Relations Association (IERA) Conference, 8 - 11 July 2003, University of Greenwich, London, Regulation, deregulation and re-regulation: the scope of employment relations in the 21st century, Plenary: ‘Women and Equal Opportunities in post-Communist Central Eastern Europe’.

    Selected Recent Refereed International Conference Papers

  • Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, 10th International Conference on Socio-Economics, 13-18 July 1998, Vienna, Austria, Challenges for the Future: Structural Changes and Transformations in Contemporary Societies, ‘Organising Labour in the Višegrad Countries Ten Years after 1989’.
  • IREC (Industrial Relations in Europe) 1999 Conference, ‘Employment Relations: Regulation and Deregulation in Europe’, 20-22 May 1999, LEST-CNRS, Aix-en Provence’ France, ‘EU Enlargement and Central and Eastern Europe: the Regulation of the Employment Relationship in the Viëegrad Countries’.
  • Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, 12th International Conference on Socio-Economics, 7 - 10 July, 2000, London School of Economics, Citizenship and Exclusion, ‘The Weakness of Labour in the Czech Republic’, 1989 - 1999.

    Official Report

    • ‘Working Conditions and Gender in an Enlarged Europe’ (with Eva Fodor) European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, April 2005, Luxembourg: Office for the Official Publications of the European Communities and at http://www.eurofound.eu.int/publications/EF04138.htm.

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