Working Lives Research Institute

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Professor Steve Jefferys

Position

Director of Working Lives Research Institute

Qualifications

Background/Career

Having been an activist at the LSE in 1965-68 Steve’s first job was on the line in the Chrysler Linwood factory in Scotland. He later became a journalist first based in Glasgow and then in London. In 1980 he went to Warwick University where he wrote a PhD and his first book on the unionisation of the Chrysler Dodge Main plant in the USA. His first academic job was at Manchester Polytechnic and during his time there he also completed a masters in computing.

In 1991 he went to Keele University where he launched a European MA in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management and increasingly specialised in European and French industrial relations. In 2000 he moved to become Professor of European Employment Studies at the University of North London, and when that merged in August 2002 to become London Metropolitan University he became Director of the Working Lives Research Institute.

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Research interests and expertise

Steve’s research interests are largely in three areas: comparative and especially French employment relations; trade union activism; and trade union policy towards racism. He is currently working on research projects on banking and telecommunication trade unions in Britain and France, as well as on European funded projects examining the responses of trade unions to racism and xenophobia and how trade unions can best represent workers in small firms.

Contact details

s.jefferys@londonmet.ac.uk
Working Lives Research Institute
London Metropolitan University
31 Jewry Street
London EC3N 2EY
Tel. 020 7320 3042

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Publications

Books

• 2003 Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité at Work: Changing French Employment Relations and Management, London: Palgrave [read a review - 96K Acrobat PDF]
• 2001 European Working Lives Edited by Steve Jefferys, Frederik Mispelblom (Évry University) and Christer Thornqvist (Gothenberg University, Sweden), Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
• 2000 Management, Welfare and Work in Western Europe: an historical and contemporary analysis with Mick Carpenter, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
• 1986 Management and Managed: Fifty Years of Crisis at Chrysler, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Selected Chapters

• 2001 ‘Taking the Pulse of British Trade Unionism: The Experience of the Communication Workers Union’, with A. Roe and C. Whitston, in S. Jefferys, F. Mispelblom, C. Thornqvist (eds), European Working Lives, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 185-200.
• 2000 ‘Western European trade unionism at 2000’, in L. Panitch and C. Leys (eds), The Socialist Register 2001, London: Merlin.

Selected Refereed Journal articles

• 2004 ‘Founding values or instrumentalism: comparing trade union activists in Britain and France’ (with Sylvie Contrepois), Industrielle Beziehungen, Jahrgang 11, Heft 1+2, pp112-28 | PDF [320KB]
• 2003 ‘Rebel France’, French Politics.
• 2000 ‘A “Copernican revolution” in French Industrial Relations: are the times a’changing?’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, June. pp 241-260.
• 1999 ‘Job regulation and the managerial challenge to trade unions: evidence from two union membership surveys’, with Colin Whitston and Alan Roe, Industrial Relations Journal, December. pp 482-498.
• 1997 ‘Restructuring and trade unions in British and French banking’ with Carole Thornley (Keele) and Sylvie Contrepois (Evry), European Journal of Industrial Relations, 3 (1), March, pp. 83-105.
• 1996 ‘Down but not out: French unions after Chirac’, Work, Employment and Society, 10, 3, September, pp. 509-527.

Selected recent conference papers

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