Engaging Labour: British Sociology 1945-2010

This paper traces the interrelationship between changes in the British trade union and labour movement and the development of sociology in Britain since the war. It considers the ways in which both have been affected by economic and political changes and how different patterns of engagement have emerged in times of crisis

After the Long Boom: Living with capitalism in the twenty first century

This paper reflects on a study of a large chemical plant published over forty years ago and the changes that have taken place in the nature of work and employment in the meantime. It examines the ways in which utopian ideas have influenced accounts of changing workplace relations often associated with the advance of new technologies. The study itself is seen to lie on the cusp of the major transformations reflected in the location of industrial plant, the nature of the division of labour, and the practice of management. Deindustrialization – involving the closure of many manufacturing facilities – is identified as a critical moment opening up other rapid changes in the composition of the labour force and the application of new technologies to new settings in the service economy. Across the period a change of discourse is registered, seen most clearly in the move from ideas of industrialism to those involving capital and labour. The paper documents a spatial, sectoral, and temporal shift in capital, culminating in its penetration of civil society and daily life, creating major questions for social-scientific approaches to industrial relations and for the organizational practices of trade union

Working Time, Industrial Relations and the Employment Relationship

This article explores the erosion of the standard working-time model associated with the UK's voluntarist system of industrial relations, and argues that its renegotiation is likely to be a critical factor in shaping the employment relationship of the future. As numerous studies over the last two decades have revealed, organizations have increasingly seen ‘time’ as a variable that can be manipulated to increase productivity or expand service provision, through making workers work harder, longer or according to management demands. These studies have also drawn our attention to the wider consequences of the increasing demands that organizations place on their employees in the name of ‘flexibility’, impacting both on what workers do while at work and how they organize and plan the other aspects of their lives. This article brings together two literatures, one on time and the other on industrial relations, and suggests that new working-time arrangements are changing the wage-effort bargain and blurring the previously clearly demarcated boundary between work and non-work time. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in six large UK-based organizations, we argue that there is evidence of a move towards a new ‘temporality’ based on an employer-led model of working time, which differs significantly from both the traditional UK system of working-time regulation and that found in Continental Europe

The persistence of union membership within the coalfields of Britain

Spatial variance in union membership has been attributed to the favourable attitudes that persist in areas with an historical legacy of trade unionism. Within the UK, villages and towns located in areas once dominated by coalmining remain among the strongest and most durable bases for the trade union movement. This paper empirically examines the effect of living within or near these areas upon union membership. Those residing in ex-mining areas retain an increased propensity for union membership. However, this effect diminishes sharply with distance. The analysis reveals that particular places can serve as conduits of trade unionism, long after employment within traditional industries has vanished