Taj Ali
In this MIRS meeting, we welcome the journalist, author, industrial correspondent and former editor of Tribune, Taj Ali, as our speaker.
The talk will be based on his forthcoming book, to be published by Manchester University Press, with the working title Come what may, we're here to stay: a story of South Asian resistance.
The book focuses on the often neglected history of South Asian political activism in Britain, ranging from defending communities from racist attacks to organising for better pay and conditions on factory floors, and draws out the implications for political organising in the twenty-first century. The book is wide ranging but the particular focus of this meeting will be on the union and workplace activism discussed in the book, and as ever there will be plenty of time for questions and debate following the talk itself.
Dr Hana Shepherd, Rutgers University
Manchester Industrial Relations Society are pleased to be hosting this online talk on the forthcoming book by Dr Hana Shepherd and Prof Janice Fine of Rutgers University.
Abstract
In the U.S., federal labor and employment laws have not kept pace with 21st century employment strategies and practices. Amidst federal inaction on worker protection, workers and community organizations forged a new path toward employment protections at the state and city levels. There has been a marked increase in the passage of municipal ordinances raising the minimum wage or providing paid sick leave protections. Some of the cities who passed these laws also established agencies or offices to enforce them. Given the importance of enforcement to the success of these laws, how agencies enforce laws determines the extent to which they can effectively improve the lives of working people in these cities.
In our book, we compare enforcement among the four oldest, most resourced local labor enforcement offices: San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City. There are many reasons to expect that the enforcement of these laws would be similar in these four cities, but their approach to labor standards enforcement-specific practices and procedures; how they use their legal authority; whether they think creatively about their job varies between them. We ask: what key conditions and processes in each city gave rise to these orientations to and practices of enforcement?
Our explanation considers how previous political struggles between workers and business led to a critical juncture: the founding of the enforcement office. The founding of the office which involved locating the office in a specific parent agency, appointing a first leader, and establishing the initial approach to enforcement-set the initial organizational conditions. Those initial conditions give rise to durable resources for interpreting and navigating multiple administrative orders in the city bureaucracy that worked against robust implementation and enforcement of pro-worker policies. The cities where the organizational founding conditions provided resources to successfully navigate competing administrative orders were those that conducted the most robust implementation. We use these cases and our explanation to discuss the implications comparative regulation and economic justice.
About the presenter
Dr Hana Shepherd [sociology.rutgers.edu] is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University in the US. Her research lies at the intersection of organizational sociology, the sociology of work and the regulation of work, social networks, social and cognitive psychology and sociology of culture. Her current work focuses on realizing employment protections for low-wage workers and employee power in low-wage workplaces. Her forthcoming book with Janice Fine examines what happens after cities pass minimum wage and paid sick leave laws and then set about trying to enforce those laws.
Professor Sian Moore, Anglia Ruskin University
This year's MIRS Shirley Lerner Annual Lecture will take place on May 15th, 6pm-7:30pm at Manchester Metropolitan Business School, Lecture Theatre 33 (and online). Prof. Sian Moore will be our speaker for this event. The lecture will be followed by a social event.
Between 2022-23 the UK saw a wave of strike action unprecedented since the 1980s, with 3.9 million working days lost in the 12 months to May 2023 compared to an average of 450,000 per year during the 2010s. While not reaching the level of the 1970s, the extent of these strikes is notable given the significant contraction of union membership, the legal constraints on strike action, and a general shift in the balance of power between employers and senior management on the one hand, and trade unions and employees on the other. Existing studies generally distinguish between proximate and underlying causes of strikes, but agree that they are multi-causal social phenomena. While the long-term erosion of pay and the cost of living crisis were immediate drivers for recent industrial action, the narratives of those on strike in public services suggest a wider context reflecting concerns about the capacity of public services, intensified managerialism and pressures on working conditions that pre-dated but were compounded by institutional responses to COVID-19 and which may point to the attenuation of organisational commitment and concerns about the undermining of professional identities, status and the quality of service delivery.
This lecture reports on research investigating the 2022-23 strikes in three public services, rail, health, and teaching. The research will explore the narratives of those taking part and the 'vocabularies of motive' and meanings those taking strike action attached to their activity. It will consider how far participation reflected a perceived attack on professional or work identity or status and (2) an erosion of organisational commitment in the context of diminishing public sector services and post-COVID-19 work environments. The research asks whether worker narratives of strike action reflect intersectional identities in terms of gender, race, age, sexuality and class in industrial action. While the research is in its early stages the lecture will focus on initial interviews and documentation reflecting on how union leaderships provided the institutional framework for strike action and how they framed and rationalised strike action.
Sian Moore is Professor of Work and Employment at Anglia Ruskin University. Her research focusses upon gender and class and their inter-relationship in the labour market, workplace and in representation and organisation. Recent research includes the experiences of frontline workers during COVID-19 and intersectionality and industrial action in the British Airways Dispute 2009-2011.