Insertion as an alternative to workfare: active labour-market schemes in the Parisian suburbs

Many governments have tightened the link between welfare and work by attaching conditionality to out-of-work benefits, extending these requirements to new client groups, and imposing market competition and greater managerial control in service delivery – principles typically characterised as ‘workfare’. Based on field research in Seine-Saint-Denis, we examine French ‘insertion’ schemes aimed at disadvantaged but potentially job-ready clients, characterized by weak conditionality, low marketization, strong professional autonomy, and local network control. We show that insertion systems have resisted policy attempts to expand workfare-derived principles, reflecting street-level actors’ belief in the key advantages of the former over the latter. In contrast with arguments stressing institutional and cultural stickiness, our explanation for this resistance thus highlights the decentralized network governance of front-line services and the limits to central government power

Final report: Wind Energy and the just transition. Political and socio-economic pinch points in wind turbine manufacturing and windfarm communities in Europe and South Africa’

This report has been funded by the British Academy under the call the ‘Just Transition within Sectors and Industries Globally’ (grant COVJT210011, October 27th, 2021 – March 22nd, 2022). It presents our finding from the research project ‘Wind energy and the Just Transition: Political and socio-economic pinch points in wind turbine manufacturing and windfarm communities in Europe and South Africa’. In this project, we explored four key pinch-points of the Just Transition: community outcomes leading to either acceptance or resistance to windfarms and skill formation, job quality and social dialogue in the wind turbine manufacturing industry. This report presents our findings regarding these four pinch points and four key questions that were informed by the British Academy’s call: 1. How is the Just Transition defined by workers, managers, social partners, and community stakeholders in the industry? 2. What are the political and socio-economic pinch points at windfarm manufacturing sites and in communities where windfarms are located? 3. How are work intensification and intensified use of the natural environment resulting from the political imperative to deploy wind turbines quickly and at large scale dealt with? 4. How can the process of structural change, meaning here the expansion of the wind turbine industry, be managed equitably so that communities and workers benefit more broadly? Our findings are based on data from windfarm communities and the wind turbine industry in Germany, Denmark, South Africa and the UK, which we collected between the years 2012 and 2022. The bulk of our data consists of semi structured interviews and focus groups with in total156 participants including industry experts, local citizens, activists, trade union and industry representatives, managers in the industry and workers, managers and instructors from skill formation providers, and municipal policy makers. We complemented this data with secondary sources, news clippings and policy documents to develop community and industry case studies for each country

Wind Energy and the just transition. Political and socio-economic pinch points in wind turbine manufacturing and windfarm communities in Europe and South Africa

This report has been funded by the British Academy under the call the ‘Just Transition within Sectors and Industries Globally’(grant COVJT210011, October 27th, 2021 – March 22nd, 2022). It presents our finding from the research project ‘Wind energy and the Just Transition: Political and socio-economic pinch points in wind turbine manufacturing and windfarm communities in Europe and South Africa’. In this project, we explored four key pinch-points of the Just Transition: community outcomes leading to either acceptance or resistance to windfarms and skill formation, job quality and social dialogue in the wind turbine manufacturing industry. This report presents our findings regarding four research questions: 1. How is the Just Transition defined by workers, managers, social partners, and community stakeholders in the industry? 2. What are the political and socio-economic pinch points at windfarm manufacturing sites and in communities where windfarms are located? 3. How are work intensification and intensified use of the natural environment resulting from the political imperative to deploy wind turbines quickly and at large scale dealt with? 4. How can the process of structural change, meaning here the expansion of the wind turbine industry, be managed equitably so that communities and workers benefit more broadly? Our findings are based on data from windfarm communities and the wind turbine industry in Germany, Denmark, South Africa and the UK, which we collected between the years 2012 and 2022. The bulk of our data consists of semi structured interviews and focus groups with in total 156 participants including industry experts, local citizens, activists, trade union and industry representatives, managers in the industry and workers, managers and instructors from skill formation providers, and municipal policy makers. We complemented this data with secondary sources, news clippings and policy documents to develop community and industry case studies for each country

Marketisation and regional planning in neoliberal public services: Evidence from French hospitals

Marxist scholarship has documented the implications of ‘neoliberal’ reforms to public services. This scholarship often considers these reforms as class projects which have disciplined working populations and created new opportunities for capitalist profit-making. But in this article, we shift emphasis to the internal dysfunction that shapes states’ pursuit of market-oriented policy agendas. We place closer focus on the specific levers through which marketising reforms are implemented, noting the conflicting pressures they unleash, and the cracks this may open through which a more democratic agenda can be advanced. Taking the French hospital sector as an example, we show how attempts to expand and intensify competition in public services have coincided with attempts to decentralise governance to the regional level. While ostensibly part of the same ‘reforming’ policy agenda, marketising policies have a strongly centralising logic which has in practice undermined efforts to develop meaningful regional planning. These institutional tensions have catalysed new political currents, as the relationship between public authorities and private sector actors has become more overtly conflictual. We argue that Marxist theorists of the state need to pay closer attention to the often dysfunctional relationship between different branches of the state, and that in the context of neoliberal public service reform, the tensions between central and regional states are particularly salient. We conclude that opponents of the marketisation of public services need to pay attention to the contested and ambiguous nature of ‘decentralisation’: while it is often a rhetorical cover for marketisation, there are opportunities for the left in demanding more meaningful and authentic forms of regional planning

A global analysis of worker protest in digital labour platforms

This paper presents findings from the Leeds Index of Platform Labour Protest, a database of platform worker protest events around the world in four platform sectors: ride-hailing, food delivery, courier services and grocery delivery for the period January 2017 to July 2020. The findings show that the single most important cause of platform worker protest is pay, followed by employment status, and health and safety

Labour protests during the pandemic: The case of hospital and retail workers in 90 countries

With a novel methodology searching news events from world’s largest news agencies via the online GDELT project, this report documents protest of key workers against their working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 90 countries

Seeking creativity: A case study on information problem solving in professional music

This study explored the information seeking behavior of a professional jazz musician during creative work. It aimed at revealing information seeking activities necessary to execute present-day musical projects. A single case was studied in depth. First, a narrative interview was conducted to reveal project phases and corresponding information seeking behavior. Second, hereupon a semi-structured interview was taken to identify information seeking activities per phase. Results indicate that the musician deliberately searched for musical information especially in the first project phases. The internet was used as main source. Both data and goal driven strategies were applied, of which the latter were relatively scarce. This means that in this case the musician sporadically searched information based on a contemplated search plan. Future research should aim at generalizing findings of this case. It should further validate the underlying analytical framework that proved to be useful for describing and categorizing musical information seeking behavior

Class Matters Inequality and Exploitation in 21st Century Britain

Social class remains a fundamental presence in British life in the twenty-first century. It is woven into the very fabric of social and political discourse, undiminished by the end of mass industry; unaugmented despite the ascendancy of 'ordinary working people' and other substitute phrases. Absent from this landscape, however, is any compelling Marxist expression or analysis of class. In Class Matters, Charles Umney brings Marxist analysis out of the 19th century textiles mill, and into the call centres, office blocks and fast food chains of modern Britain. He shows how core Marxist concepts are vital to understanding increasing pay inequality, decreasing job security, increasing routinisation and managerial control of the labour process. Providing a critical analysis of competing perspectives, Umney argues that class must be understood as a dynamic and exploitative process integral to capitalism - rather than a descriptive categorisation - in order for us to better understand the gains capital has made at the expense of labour over the last four decades