Alex J Wood

Flexible scheduling, degradation of job quality and barriers to collective voice:

This article examines the operation of flexible scheduling in practice through a case study of a large retail firm in the United Kingdom. It includes analysis of 39 semi-structured interviews, participant observation of shop floor work and non-participant observation of union organizing as well as analysis of key documents. The findings highlight the high level of generalized temporal flexibility across employment statuses. This temporal flexibility enables firm flexibility without necessitating a reliance upon contingent workers. Temporal flexibility is found to entail manager-control of flexible scheduling and is shown to be damaging to perceptions of job quality as it acts as a barrier to work-life balance. Union presence and collective bargaining at the firm are found to be ineffective at influencing flexible scheduling so as to improve job quality. This ineffectiveness can be explained by the union operating in an employer-dominated industrial relations environment in which its associational power is unable to compensate for a lack of institutional and structural economic power.

Networks of Injustice and Worker Mobilisation at Walmart

This article investigates the use of Internet networks during the recent mobilisation of Californian Walmart workers. The findings of this case study suggest that Internet-based mass self-communication networks (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) can complement traditional organising techniques. Mass self-communication networks ameliorate many of the weaknesses identified by previous studies of Internet networks. In particular, these types of networks can help overcome negative dispositions towards unions, increase the density of communication and the level of participation among members, create a collective identity congruent with trade unionism, facilitate organisation and spread ‘swarming actions’ which are effective at leveraging symbolic power. Moreover, unions may be well suited to providing crucial strategic oversight and coordination to wider worker networks.

Good Gig, Bad Gig: Autonomy and Algorithmic Control in the Global Gig Economy:

This article evaluates the job quality of work in the remote gig economy. Such work consists of the remote provision of a wide variety of digital services mediated by online labour platforms. Focusing on workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the article draws on semi-structured interviews in six countries (N = 107) and a cross-regional survey (N = 679) to detail the manner in which remote gig work is shaped by platform-based algorithmic control. Despite varying country contexts and types of work, we show that algorithmic control is central to the operation of online labour platforms. Algorithmic management techniques tend to offer workers high levels of flexibility, autonomy, task variety and complexity. However, these mechanisms of control can also result in low pay, social isolation, working unsocial and irregular hours, overwork, sleep deprivation and exhaustion.

C5a anaphylatoxin and its role in critical illness-induced organ dysfunction

Critical illness is an aetiologically and clinically heterogeneous syndrome that is characterised by organ failure and immune dysfunction. Mortality in critically ill patients is driven by inflammation‐associated organ damage and a profound vulnerability to nosocomial infection. Both factors are influenced by the activated complement protein C5a, released by unbridled activation of the complement system during critical illness. C5a exerts deleterious effects on organ systems directly and suppresses antimicrobial functions of key immune cells. Whilst several recent reports have added key knowledge of the cellular signalling pathways triggered by C5a, there remain a number of areas that are incompletely understood and therapeutic opportunities are still being evaluated. In this review, we summarise the cellular basis for C5a‐induced vulnerability to nosocomial infection and organ dysfunction. We focus on cells of the innate immune system, highlighting the major areas in need of further research and potential avenues for targeted therapies.

Book review: Lina Dencik and Peter Wilkin, Worker Resistance and Media: Challenging Global Corporate Power in the 21st Century

This book makes timely contributions in two areas of interest to Work, employment and society readers. First, a unique up-to-date labour movement history based around the tension between authoritarianism and libertarianism – which the authors argue to be a fundamental axis in the organization of social life. Second, an empirical account and analysis of the potential of four recent high profile labour mobilizations to further libertarianism. Of particular interest is the role of social media in aiding these mobilizations. Four case studies of labour mobilizations are covered: Justice for Janitors (JFJ) in the USA; Justice for Cleaners (JFC) in the UK; Fast Food Forward (FFF) in the USA; and domestic workers in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Powerful times: Flexible discipline and schedule gifts at work:

This article uses two ethnographic retail case studies to investigate contemporary workplace control. The findings highlight how flexible scheduling has serious consequences for workers and causes insecurity. This provides managers with a powerful and unaccountable mechanism for securing control. The benefits for managers of using flexible scheduling to secure control are shown to be its ambiguity and flexibility. Moreover, flexible scheduling creates an environment where workers must continually strive to maintain managers’ favour. Little evidence is found to suggest that this control is aided by work games obscuring workplace relations. Flexible scheduling does, however, enable misrecognition of workplace relations due to the schedule gifts which it entails. Schedule gifts act to bind workers to managers’ interests through feelings of gratitude and moral obligation.

Book review: Tom Malleson, After Occupy: Economic Democracy for the 21st Century

further elucidates varieties of the precariat (p. 28), characterizes the experience of precariousness as divisive (p. 101) and depicts an innate lack of collective agency (p. 150). Accordingly this book holds on to the rather unconvincing emphasis of the transformative potential of the precariat to become a ‘class-for-itself’, rather than providing a definitive account of its actual current condition. Finally, by being overly reliant on singular examples such as one jobseeker (p. 226), one graduate (p. 286) and one US firm (p. 157), alongside speculative assertions such as ‘workfare must have a depressive effect on wages’ (p. 275, emphasis added), this book’s almost journalistic narrative and lack of systematic evidentiary support for its claims make it an easy target for anyone sceptical of the precarity agenda. Subsequently this book lacks the rigour to be considered an academic text but is too overloaded with jargon to be fully accessible to even the most discerning of lay readers. In conclusion, despite fulfilling its aims in providing some clear solutions to aspects of precarity, A Precariat Charter is ultimately a more detailed reiteration of its predecessor that demonstrates little theoretical development from its own origins. Nevertheless this book does serve as a vital mechanism in further highlighting the insecurities, injustices and inequalities of the neoliberal era; and therefore its appeal and inevitable popularity lie in its broad scope. Accordingly this book should be of interest to anyone working in the broad field of labour market insecurity; however, one should look elsewhere if a more detailed insight into the experiences of a particular research population is required.