Peter Turnbull

Cleared for Take-off? Management-Labour Partnership in the European Civil Aviation Industry:

As product and labour markets within the European Union are liberalized and deregulated, industrial relations regulation appears to shift from national to sector and company levels. Nonetheless, company-based initiatives such as management-labour partnerships are still more likely to flourish in coordinated rather than liberal market economies. This is demonstrated in this article by a contextualized comparison of three national airlines. While Lufthansa has been able to develop an innovative, long-term competitive strategy, both British Airways and Aer Lingus have been permitted, if not compelled, to pursue short-term, cost-minimizing strategies inimical to their management-labour partnerships.

LABOUR MARKET DEREGULATION AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF BRITAIN'S DOCKS

Economic deregulation has been the principal labour market policy of the Thatcher Government during the 1980s. Unlike most workers, however, Britains registered dockers appeared to be immune from this process until the Government suddenly announced the abolition of the National Dock Labour Scheme in April 1989. The Dock Work Bill which abolished the Scheme received Royal Assent on 3 July 1989 and the docks have since witnessed a transformation of industrial relations. As with other sectors of the economy, however, deregulation appears to have had only a short-term impact on productivity and may well impair the performance of Britains port transport sector during the 1990s.

Synthesis from (–)-aristeromycin and X-ray structure of (–)-carbovir

Efficient processes are described for the synthesis of (–)-carbovir 3 and its triphosphate derivative 28 from (–)-aristeromycin 4. The X-ray structure of (–)-carbovir has been determined.

Reassessing the Employment Relationship

Introduction The Critical Future of HRM Research Personnel Economics and the Employment Relationship New Forms of Control in Contemporary Work Organizations Reassessing Identities in and of Organizations Reassessing Markets and the Employment Relationship Reassessing Governance and the Employment Relationship Reassessing Employment Law Bringing Employment Cack In: a Critique of Current Theorising of Inter-organizational Relations Customer Service and Customer Service Work E.OgbonnaWork and Non-Work Life: an Assessment Assessing Voice Managing Knowledge Work: Towards a Critical Understanding The Future of Equality Agendas: the Problems of Intersectionality in Theory and Practice The Employment Relationship in the Public Sector: Does it Retain its Distinctiveness? Ask Not What HRM Can Do for Performance but What HRM Did to Performance Wages and the Employment Relationship - Low Pay, High Pay and Occupational Pay Reassessing Varieties of Capitalism: the Changing Employment Relationship in Germany and Japan Globalization and Employment Relations Ethics, Employment and Poverty in the Global Market Place

Normalizing extreme work in the Police Service? Austerity and the inspecting ranks

Using rich and extensive data collected from police Inspectors over an extended period (2011–2014), this study explores two research questions that seek to (1) define extreme work in policing and (2) understand how it is maintained and reproduced. For some, by definition, the work of the emergency services is understood to be extreme, but the urgent and dangerous elements of policing form only a small part of an Inspector’s job and for these incidents they are well-trained in advance and well-cared for afterwards. When police Inspectors describe their work in times of austerity, it is not the emergency aspects that they experience as extreme work. Rather, it is the intensity of work over long hours above contract, which are both involuntary and unrewarded. In seeking to understand what drives extreme work and why it is accepted, especially when it is not preferred, not paid for and has detrimental effects on health and wellbeing, we uncover a process of institutional maintenance through which over-work: (1) is intensified via the extra demands imposed by austerity; (2) is maintained through work practices, a strong professional identity and a masculine police culture; but (3) is not ‘normalized’ in the sense of being embraced or celebrated by police Inspectors.

Power in the Skies: Pilot Commitment and Trade Union Power in the Civil Aviation Industry

This chapter discusses the power of trade unions within the UK civil aviation industry, focusing specifically on the British Air Line Pilots’ Association (BALPA) that represents flight crew. The deleterious effects of the contemporary legislative and competitive environment of air transportation on the ability of BALPA to exact concessions from airline management are discussed as are the changes to the nature of work of flight crew that impact on the structural dimensions from which BALPA derives its power. These are weighed against the associational dimension of BALPAs power base, in particular the willingness of pilots to engage in active militancy. The chapter also considers possible organizing strategies for BALPA in order to challenge managerial prerogative in the industry.

Unions and their members

‘We came out of the workplace, and I just thought, “YES”! What a feeling’, enthused Louise Chinnery, ‘there’s nothing else like it. We’ve enabled people to change their lives, to look after themselves at work. There’s no other job I know of where you get that kind of feeling’ (interview notes). Louise is a women’s recruiter for the T&GWU in Region 1 (South-East and East Anglia), having previously worked as an assistant development manager at Homes for the Homeless People in Luton after graduating from Essex University with a degree in History and Politics. Along with Karen Hannant, who previously worked for Britannia Airways and was a shop steward at Servisair, Louise’s job is to recruit and organise non-union workers, especially women and young workers. To date they have been highly successful: of the 187 new members recruited by the two women during the first five months of their one-year contracts, 65 per cent are female and well over half are below 30 years old. Of course the process of recruitment is by no means automatic: ‘It’s a myth that just because we’re women that we’ll automatically be able to recruit other women. It’s not just a case of showing your face and expecting people to sign up. If anything, they’re rather surprised when we turn up — I don’t think they expect people from the Union to look like us’ (Karen Hannant, interview notes). Karen and Louise have found that speed of response, being sensitive to workers’ problems, active listening, understanding, sympathy, imbuing confidence and organising around issues are all vital to recruiting new members to the Union.

Speaking of Contradiction

Whereas McGovern calls for a moratorium on the ever increasing (ab)use of the word ‘contradiction’, principally because scholars of work and employment fail to connect different levels of analysis and/or demonstrate how and why contradiction(s) lead to widespread instability and upheaval, it can be demonstrated how both can be achieved through the ‘system, society, dominance’ framework. In what follows, the empirical focus is on the safety-critical work of airport ground service providers (GSPs), where key elements of the employment relationship embody contradictions that can be traced to the (sub-)system (mode of production) of a Single European Aviation Market (SEAM) that is now dominated by low fares airlines (LFAs). Instead of a moratorium, scholars of work and employment need to reconnect with society and theoretically ground their analysis in a (capitalist) system beset with contradictions between the forces and relations of production.

From horizontal to vertical labour governance: The International Labour Organization (ILO) and decent work in global supply chains

The role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the governance of global supply chains is typically neglected or simply dismissed as ineffective. This is understandable as global supply chains have undermined the traditional nation state (horizontal) paradigm of global labour governance, most notably the international Conventions agreed by the tripartite constituents (governments, employers and workers’ representatives) of the ILO. But this simply poses the question of whether, and if so how, the ILO can reframe the system of global labour governance to include the (vertical) global supply chains that all too often fail to deliver ‘decent work for all’. Based on an extended ethnographic study, we demonstrate how policy entrepreneurs (international civil servants) within the ILO can play a pivotal role in not only reframing the discourse in a way that resonates with the ‘lived experiences’ of constituents but also ‘orchestrate’ the social partners in order to secure majority support for a process that might ultimately lead to a new standard (Convention) for decent work in global supply chains. A new approach to employment relationships in global supply chains is ‘in the making’, with the potential to improve working conditions and rights at work for millions across the globe.

Talking up a storm? Using language to activate adherents and demobilize detractors of European Commission policy frames

ABSTRACT The linguistic premises of European policy-making often remain hidden from public debate and the scrutiny of social scientists, despite the fact that ‘rhetorical framing’ is a widely recognized strategy and frame theory has dominated the way social scientists talk about ideas in social movements. Our concern is how the European Commission uses the ‘master frame’ of neoliberalism to establish a mandate for sector-specific policies that can be pursued via autonomous action by the Commission and/or collective action by adherents of Commission policies. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) to decode the speeches of Siim Kallas, former commissioner for transport and advocate of an open market for port services, we demonstrate how rhetorical framing supports a strategy designed to ‘divide-and-conquer’ opponents of freedom of establishment and the right to provide services in the single European market.