Expression and expropriation : the dialectics of autonomy and control in creative labour

Creative labour occupies a highly contradictory position in modern, global, ‘knowledge-based’ economies. On the one hand, companies have to balance their insatiable need for a stream of innovative ideas with the equally strong imperative to gain control over intellectual property and manage a creative workforce. On the other, creative workers have to find a balance between the urge for self-expression and recognition and the need to earn a living. This article explores the interplay between these doubly contradictory impulses, drawing on the results of European research carried out within the scope of the WORKS project as well as other research by the author. It argues that the co-existence of multiple forms of control makes it difficult for workers to find appropriate forms of resistance. Combined with increasing tensions between the urges to compete and to collaborate, these contradictions pose formidable obstacles to the development of coherent resistance strategies by creative workers.Peer reviewe

Saints and sinners : lessons about work from daytime TV

This article looks at the messages given by factual TV programmes to audiences about work, and, in particular, the models of working behaviour that have been presented to them during the period following the 2007-8 financial crisis. It focuses particularly, but not exclusively, on daytime TV, which has an audience made up disproportionately of people who have low incomes and are poorly educated: an audience that, it can be argued, is not only more likely than average to be dependent on welfare benefits and vulnerable to their withdrawal but also more likely to be coerced into entering low-paid insecure and casual employment. It argues that the messages cumulatively given by ‘factual’ TV, including reality TV programmes ostensibly produced for entertainment as well as documentaries, combine to produce a particular neoliberal model of the deserving worker (counterposed to the undeserving ‘scrounger’ or ‘slacker’) highly suited to the atomised and precarious labour markets of a globalised economy. This is, however, a model in which there are considerable tensions between different forms of desired behaviour: on the one hand, a requirement for intense, individualised and ruthless competitiveness and, on the other, a requirement for unquestioning and self-sacrificing loyalty and commitment to the employer and the customer. These apparently contradictory values are, however, synthesised in a rejection, often amounting to demonisation, of collective values of fairness, entitlement and solidarity.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Future of work: taking the blinkers off to see new possibilities

New winners, models and industries will emerge; the universe is full of new opportunities for commodification, writes Ursula Huw

Eating us out of house and home: The dynamics of commodification and decommodification of reproductive labour in the formation of virtual work

This document is the Accepted Manuscript of the following article: Ursula Huws, ‘Eating us out of house and home: The dynamics of commodification and decommodification of reproductive labour in the formation of virtual work’, International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, Vol. 14 (1): March 2018. Under embargo until 1 March 2019. The final, definitive version is available online at doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/macp.14.1.111_7. © 2018 Intellect Content in the UH Research Archive is made available for personal research, educational, and non-commercial purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, all content is protected by copyright, and in the absence of an open license, permissions for further re-use should be sought from the publisher, the author, or other copyright holder.Peer reviewe

The social impacts of changes in the spatial and technical division of labour

As many analysts have observed (perhaps most notably Durkheim, 1893), its division of labour is perhaps the most fundamental distinguishing feature of any society. The division of labour defines the roles played by men and by women, determines patterns of authority and deference, structures hierarchies, and assigns people to groups, creating patterns of inclusion and exclusion, solidarity and competition, and shaping their inter-relationships. Changes in the division of labour thus have profound social impacts. This thesis brings together a body of work which aims to develop a conceptual framework for understanding and modelling the underlying dynamics of change in the division of labour in order to shed light on these social impacts

The Platformisation Of Work In Europe: Results from research in 13 European countries

These data are from an innovative survey carried out fourteen times across thirteen European countries (with the United Kingdom being surveyed twice - in 2016 and 2019), revealing, for the first time, the extent and characteristics of platform workers. In the above mentioned reports, the survey results are complemented by in-depth interviews with a range of platform workers, shedding light on the realities of their working lives, including the stresses, fears and health hazards they face, as well as the satisfactions they experience. This joint research project was launched in January 2016. It was carried out by the University of Hertfordshire in association with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and UNI Europa, the European services workers union. Co-funding for national surveys was provided by Unionen in Sweden, the TNO Research Institute in the Netherlands, The Chamber of Labour (AK) in Austria, ver.di and IG Metall in Germany, syndicom in Switzerland, the Fondazione EYU in Italy, the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) in Estonia, the Kalevi Sorsa Foundation and Service Union United (PAM), in Finland, the Felipe Gonzalez Foundation in Spain, Progresiva in Slovenia, the Masarykova demokratická akademie and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung office in Prague in Czechia, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the UK and the Fondation Jean-Jaurès in France. Fieldwork for the 14 surveys in the 13 countries was carried out by Ipsos MORI between January 2016 and May 2019.Foundation For European Progressive StudiesTrades Union Congress (TUC