Sian Moore

‘No matter what I did I would still end up in the same position’: age as a factor defining older women’s experience of labour market participation

This article explores age as a factor defining the labour market experience of older women. Drawing upon work histories it argues that discrimination on the grounds of age is bound up with gender, race and class. Older women described how all three categories had structured their working lives, with occupational and sectoral segregation underpinning a legacy of disadvantage. Intersectionality provides a tool to explore the interaction of social divisions over the life course, in preference to those privileging the instability and diversity of social identities. Although the testimonies of older women underline the need to situate their experiences within a unified system characterized by capitalist economic relations. The research enables analysis of the workers perceptions of the changing nature of work and the way that age can be constructed in terms of advantage and disadvantage within specific occupations and sectors already defined in terms of gender and race.

Cabin crew collectivism: labour process and the roots of mobilization

The protracted dispute (2009–11) between British Airways and BASSA (British Airways Stewards and Stewardesses Association) was notable for the strength of collective action by cabin crew. In-depth interviews reveal collectivism rooted in the labour process and highlight the key agency of BASSA in effectively articulating worker interests. This data emphasizes crews’ relative autonomy, sustained by unionate on-board Cabin Service Directors who have defended the frontier of control against managerial incursions. Periodic attempts to re-configure the labour process, driven by cost cutting imperatives in an increasingly competitive airline industry, eroded crews’ organizational loyalties. When BA imposed radical changes to contracts and working arrangements, BASSA successfully mobilized its membership. The article contributes to labour process analysis by emphasizing the collective dimensions to emotional labour, restoring the ‘missing subject’, but also articulating the interconnections between labour process and mobilization and the role unions can play in providing the organizational and ideological resources to legitimate worker interest.

The Evolving Role of Union Learning Representatives.

This article suggests that the union learning representative (ULR) is increasingly situated at the heart of trade union activity. The paper draws upon recent research based on interviews with national trade union officers and case studies of union learning activity to explore the competing demands being made upon ULRs and the implications for their role in the union and the delivery of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the workplace. It finds that whilst the government’s learning and skills agenda has moved away from a broad conceptualisation of learning for social and self‐development and towards an increasingly narrow interpretation of lifelong learning based upon employability, ULRs and trade unions have not abandoned this vision. At the same time, union expectations of the role of the ULR appear to have shifted and they are increasingly seen as part of wider union recruitment and organising strategies. The case studies suggest that where efforts are made to integrate ULRs into the wider union, a number broaden their activism beyond learning and make a contribution to building workplace or branch organisation on the basis of learning.

Shifting Models of Equality? Union Equality Reps in the Public Services

This article explores how far the emergence of public sector Equality Representatives represents a departure from a distinct radical model of union self-organisation generated by the collective mobilisation of politically conscious identities, towards a more inclusive liberal model of equality based on abstract notions of ‘fairness’.

The changing face of employment relations: equality and diversity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore what has happened to the notion and reality of equal pay over the past 50 years, a period in which women have become the majority of trade union members in the UK. It does so in the context of record employment levels based upon women’s increased labour market participation albeit reflecting their continued over-representation in part-time employment, locating the narrowed but persistent overall gender pay gap in the broader picture of pay inequality in the UK. Design/methodology/approach – The paper considers voluntary and legal responses to inequality and the move away from voluntary solutions in the changed environment for unions. Following others it discusses the potential for collective bargaining to be harnessed to equality in work, a potential only partially realised by unions in a period in which their capacity to sustain collective bargaining was weakened. It looks at the introduction of a statutory route to collective bargaining in 2000, the Nati...

Utilising Biographical Narrative Interpretive Methods: rich perspectives on union learning journeys and learner motivations

This article explores the use of Biographical Narrative Interpretive Methods (BNIM) in research on motivations for trade union learning. Our use of BNIM – a new methodological approach for us – was intended to test our own research practice in an effort to get further inside the ‘felt world’ and ‘lived life’ of the union learner. We concluded that educational deficit, employability, ways of learning and collectivism motivate union learners and that BNIM, though problematic, exposes a raw subjectivity in union learner agency and motivation which may not be fully invoked in traditional interview approaches, and which is of interest methodologically to multiple research fields including industrial relations. Whilst we have concerns that BNIM may privilege subjectivity and obscure social locations, we also find that semi-structured interviews may prompt learners to adopt hegemonic frameworks, whereas BNIM can allow the articulation of wider social relationships, desires and counter-hegemonic impulses.

‘The only way is Essex’: Gender, union and mobilisation among fire service control room staff

This contribution to On the Front Line records a dialogue between two female Fire Brigades Union (FBU) representatives in the Essex Emergency Control Room, who led industrial action over the imposition of a shift system that stretched their work–life balance to breaking point and constrained their ability to work full-time. Their testimony reveals how male members were mobilised in the interests of predominantly female control staff. Kate and Lynne’s discussion illuminates the interaction of gender and class interests and identities in the union and in the lives of its women members. It provides insight into the efficacy of trade unions for women’s collective action.

Locating the 2000 Statutory Recognition Procedure

Until 2000, save for a very brief period in the 1970s (discussed below), there was no statutory system of trade union recognition. Trade unions had rights to represent their members only in so far as an employer was prepared to concede it. This notion of an employer veto over rights to representation is very different from that which applies in most of the Member States of the European Union.1 In these states the legitimacy of trade unions is acknowledged; either because it is enshrined in the state’s constitution or is embedded in primary legislation which recognises trade unions as key social actors and which therefore grants an automatic right to recognition. The idea that an employer in Italy, Germany or France would have the power to veto the rights of trade unions to represent their members in the workplace is unthinkable, and social dialogue is conducted through the recognised social partners — the trade unions and their counterpart employer organisations. In these countries the employer has no say over the right of a union to represent its members and workers more generally. This apparent weakness in the UK model seems to be at odds with the power and the position which trade unions in the UK have traditionally been viewed as exercising; at least until relatively recently a majority of workers were union members or as a minimum worked under terms and conditions that had been negotiated by a trade union with their employer.

Challenging Recognition — The Legitimacy of Employer Behaviour

This chapter turns to employer responses to recognition claims. As Chapter 1 described, employer behaviour defeated previous recognition legislation and the design of the 2000 statutory process aimed to ensure that this would not reoccur. Yet initial research (Ewing et al., 2003) suggested that employers had the potential to frustrate the purpose of the legislation, both within and outside the procedure. In the 2010 survey of the 20 unions that up to that point had used the procedure, the vast majority — 17 of 20 (85%) — considered that employer behaviour generally aimed to undermine union claims. This raises questions about the extent to which contesting recognition represents legitimate employer behaviour or whether its aim is to circumvent the rights to recognition provided by law, an aspect explored more fully in Chapter 6. Whilst CAC decisions document employer responses to claims once in the procedure, the seven case studies highlighted in this chapter offer a fuller picture of employer behaviour in the workplace. We draw upon both the CAC decisions and the case studies to identify employer strategies that preempt recognition claims, exploit legal technicalities, contest the union’s application by influencing CAC discretion and finally intervene in the workplace to undermine union support.

Be Careful What You Wish for — Unfair Practices and the Law

The previous two chapters looked at both employer and trade union strategies in relation to the recognition law and raised the question of what might constitute legitimate contestation over employee representation in the workplace. This chapter turns to a key change to the law introduced in 2004 by which certain practices within the procedure can be challenged as unfair. Subsequent to its implementation, the 2010 survey of trade unions found that whilst the overwhelming majority reported that they had encountered employer behaviour which they considered constituted an unfair practice, less than a quarter had submitted a complaint under the legislation. The chapter sets out the background to the call for a change to the law and examines the content of the legislative amendment, noting that either party can commit unfair practices with negative consequences for the offending party. It also considers why unions have made only a small number of claims alleging unfair practices, as well as why none have been upheld.