Industrial relations, the New Right and the praxis of mismanagement

Purpose: The purpose of the article is to outline the insights provided by Alan Fox in Man Mismanagement in relation to the rise of the New Right political economy and the spread of unitarist managerialism. The article assesses the contemporary work and employment relations implications of mismanagement arising from a “second wave” of the New Right ideology from 2010 in the UK. Design/methodology/approach: Responding to the Special Issue on Alan Fox, the article focuses on Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, considering industrial relations developments arising between the 1st (1974b) and 2nd (1985) editions relating to the political rise of the New Right. It reviews various literature that illustrates the contemporary IR relevance of the book and Fox's insights. Findings: The New Right’s ideology has further fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collective industrial relations institutions, and macho mismanagement praxis is even more commonplace, compared to when Fox wrote Man Mismanagement. The stripping away of the institutional architecture of IR renders the renewal of pluralist praxis, like collective bargaining and other forms of joint regulation of work, a formidable task. Originality/value: The value of the article relates to the identification of dramatic historical industrial relations events and change in the UK in Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, most notably relating to the rise to power of the Thatcherite New Right in 1979. Originality is evidenced by the authors’ drawing on Fox's ideas and assessing the implications of the “second wave” of the New Right in the contemporary industrial relations (IR) context of the 2020s under the conceptual themes of fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collectivism.</p

Why employment relations matter(s) for governance of problems for labour in the real world of work

The purpose of this Research Insights article is to emphasise why employment relations matter(s) for governance of problems for labour in the real world of work. This article presents two main points of novelty. One is the contemporary contribution of ER in relation to emergent research themes addressing real-world challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic, climate emergency, intersectionality, technological change and good work. The conceptual boundaries of work and employment/industrial relations research have therefore expanded beyond a traditional focus on collective bargaining and trade unions (although these remain vital). These contemporary themes mainly concern problems for labour, rather than traditional perceived problems of labour. The second, related, contribution is that ER has developed its analytical apparatus so as to be sensitive to concrete real-world issues, like climate change, and new perspectives in social science, like intersectionality. So, overall, there is a new and evolving conversation between analytical perspectives and real-world challenges. [Re]asserting core ER perspectives and specifying a research agenda and road map around big picture themes and challenges, the article follows other critical scholars in suggesting that it is important that ER researchers continue to speak truth to power in pursuit of ‘sociological imagination’ relating to the world of work

Moral Economy and the Ethics of the Real Living Wage in UK Football Clubs

Real living wages (RLWs) are an important ethical and moral policy to ensure that employees earn enough to live on. In providing ‘a fair day's pay for a fair day's work’, they set an ethical foundation for liveability. This article explores the ethics and moral economy of the RLW for lower-paid staff in the overlooked economy context of UK professional football, illustrated by a qualitative case study of Luton Town Football Club (LTFC). The article provides theoretical insights grounded in moral economy concepts about how a RLW contributes to a broader common good means of enabling fuller human participation in decent working and living conditions. Applying these concepts using a multi-disciplinary moral economy interpretation offers deeper theoretical contributions than economistic interpretations restricted to mainly technocratic economic distributive issues. LTFC are evidently ethically embedded in a moral economy as a local community club paying a RLW, and part of the overlooked economy. The research also contributes to contemporary debates on ‘Common Good’ HRM regarding the role of living wages in addressing grand common good challenges like inequality and quality of working lives

English Footballs Richest Clubs fail to pay staff a real Living

There is academic research about Living Wage policy and practice (Prowse and Fells, 2015; Linneker and Wills, 2016). But, there is no research on Living Wages in the context of football, specifically regarding UK Premier League and Football League clubs. Our research raises corporate governance issues relating to the fact that only three English Premier League football clubs pay their low-paid staff a Real Living Wage, despite the current wealth bonanza

Moral economy, solidarity and labour process struggle in Irish public transport

This article empirically applies Knut Laaser’s integrated conceptual framework, combining Sayer’s moral economy (ME) theory with labour process theory (LPT), to examine how two rival Irish unions engaged with an uneven moral economy and consciously sought to build collective worker solidarity during a dispute over competitive tendering and marketization. Using qualitative data from a case study of BusCo in Ireland’s public transport sector, the article enriches sociological understanding of trade union solidarity, and how it is engendered, contested and experienced. </jats:p

Regulating for mutual gains? Non-union employee representation and the Information and Consultation Directive

Interest in ‘mutual gains’ has principally been confined to studies of the unionised sector. Yet there is no reason why this conceptual dynamic cannot be extended to the non-unionised realm, specifically in relation to non-union employee representation (NER). Although extant research views NER as unfertile terrain for mutual gains, the paper examines whether NER developed in response to the European Directive on Information and Consultation (I&C) of Employees may offer a potentially more fruitful route. The paper examines this possibility by considering three cases of NER established under the I&C Directive in Ireland, assessing the extent to which mutual gains were achieved

Conceptualising decent work: an explorative study of decent work in England’s Midlands region

Despite an increased focus on the quality as well as quantity of work, conceptualisation of decent work remains underdeveloped. There is no single agreed definition of decent work. The ILO (1999) provides an overarching definition of decent work as ‘productive work for women and men in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity’. This article contributes to conceptual advancement of decent work by compiling a new holistic framework comprising dimensions of decent work, distributive and contributive justice, hard and soft policy regulation, and levels of decent work. Its main aim is to evaluate the suitability of this new conceptual framework for exploring the prognosis on decent work – mainly as a means for informing policy interventions. This is done by applying the framework empirically through analysing evidence collected in the context of the UK’s Midlands region using qualitative research methods, including interviews capturing perspectives from various stakeholders. Limited sub-national devolved policy levers are identified, exacerbated by limited hard regulations nationally supporting decent work/workers’ rights

‘Going Underground’::A Tube Worker’s Experience of Struggles over the Frontier of Control

Mainstream media representation of London Underground (LU) workers typically foregrounds their alleged militancy, greed and negligence towards the travelling public. This knee-jerk tendency obscures the voices, expressions and experiences of workers themselves. This article enriches public sociology by giving Stephen, a Tube driver and former LU station worker, a platform to share his vivid story. Stephen’s voice reveals deep sociological insights into the realities of workplace struggles over the shifting ‘frontier of control’ at LU, and graphically captures uneven and fluid patterns of individual/collective resistance to restructuring and ‘modernization’. His lived experiences of managerial control and worker autonomy, interfacing with different degrees of alienation, new technology and customer engagement, have changed over time as ‘passengers’ become ‘customers’ and ‘give and take’ employment relations dwindle.</jats:p