Ian Greenwood

‘Learners of the workplace unite!’ an empirical examination of the UK trade union learning representative initiative

The statutory rights conferred on trade union learning representatives (ULRs) under the 2002 Employment Act represent a significant development for the British trade union movement.This article presents an initial empirical assessment of the ULR initiative, drawing from original quantitative and qualitative data on ULR activity. Our findings suggest that while ULRs have been successful in promoting and facilitating employee-centred learning opportunities, the development of their role is potentially constrained by their evolving relationships with employers and their insertion into broader trade structures. Nonetheless, there are signs that the initiative has the potential to contribute to the recruitment of new trade union members.

‘All that is Solid?’: Class, Identity and the Maintenance of a Collective Orientation amongst Redundant Steelworkers

This article explores the importance of class and collectivism to personal identity, and the role this played during a period of personal and collective crisis created by mass redundancy in the Welsh steel industry. The research findings demonstrate the importance of occupational identity to individual and collective identity formation. The apparent desire to maintain this collective identity acted as a form of resistance to the increased individualization of the post-redundancy experience, but rather than leading to excessive particularism, it served as a mechanism through which class-based thinking and class identity were articulated. It is argued that the continued concern for class identity reflected efforts to avoid submergence in an existence akin to Beck’s (1992) vision of a class-free ‘individualized society of employees’.These findings therefore challenge the notion of the pervasiveness of individualism and the dismissal of class and collective orientations as important influences on identity formation.

Work–life balance and older workers: employees' perspectives on retirement transitions following redundancy

Work-life balance and older workers : Employees’ perspectives on retirement transitions following redundancy

Redundancy as a critical life event moving on from the Welsh steel industry through career change

This article investigates the process of moving on from redundancy in the Welsh steel industry among individuals seeking new careers. It identifies a spectrum of career change experience, ranging from those who had actively planned their career change, prior to the redundancies, to those ‘at a career crossroads’, for whom there were tensions between future projects, present contingencies and past identities. It suggests that the process of moving on from redundancy can be better understood if we are able to identify, not just structural and cultural enablers and constraints but also the temporal dimensions of agency that facilitate or limit transformative action in the context of critical life events. Where individuals are located on the spectrum of career change experience will depend on the balance of enabling and constraining factors across the four aspects considered, namely temporal dimensions of agency, individuals’ biographical experience, structural and cultural contexts.

Team-working, Restructuring and Skills in UK and Sweden

■ This article investigates the connection between team-working, workplace learning and skills and industrial relations in six manufacturing plants in the Swedish and UK steel and metal sectors. The forms and processes of team-working observed do not conform to a stereotyped dichotomy between Swedish autonomous work organization and more hierarchical UK traditions. Our findings demonstrate the importance of product markets, sectoral effects and management processes, and the role of strategies as well as institutional structures.

Do economic conditions influence union activism behaviour

This article develops and tests the theory that union activism is related to economic conditions using a nationally representative panel of workers from the UK. Results suggest that a fall in real wages of two percentage points and a three percentage point increase in the unemployment rate are both associated with a one-tenth increase in the probability that a ‘benchmark’ worker will become a union activist (albeit from a low base). This relationship is largely explained by the behaviour of workers in highly unionized sectors.

Socially responsible restructuring in an era of mass redundancy: myth or reality?

During the global economic downturn of recent years, there has been rising interest in the anticipation and management of redundancies, and in notions of ‘socially responsible restructuring’, although studies of the effects of layoffs on workers remain relatively scarce. In this paper we address three questions. First, what are the consequences of actions undertaken in the pre-redundancy period on workers? Secondly, how does the concept of socially responsible restructuring translate into concrete actions taken in the pre-redundancy period? Thirdly, what are the critical factors that constrain and mediate socially responsible approaches to restructuring? We address these questions through a detailed case study of restructuring in the steel industry in the UK. We find that actions taken in the pre-redundancy period can have deleterious consequences for workers. We also find considerable gaps between the rhetoric of socially responsible restructuring and the realities of the anticipation and management of r...