Thomas Hastings

Re-embedding agency at the workplace scale: Workers and labour control in Glasgow call centres

Following recent calls for the development of a more embedded sense of labour agency, this paper focuses on the scale of the workplace which is largely absent from recent labour geography debates. Drawing on studies in the labour process tradition, the paper presents empirical research on call centre work in Glasgow, utilising this to revisit the concept of local Labour Control Regimes. We argue that rather than being simply imposed by capital and the state ‘from above’, workplace control should be seen as the product of a dialectical process of interaction and negotiation between management and labour. Labours indeterminacy can influence capital in case specific ways as firms adapt to labour agency and selectively tolerate and collude with certain practices and behaviours. Workers’ learned behaviours and identities are shown to affect not only recruitment patterns in unexpected ways, but also modes of accepted conduct in call centres. Accordingly, the case is made for the influence of subtle – yet pervasive – worker agency expressed at the micro-scale of the labour process itself. This, it is argued, exerts a degree of ‘bottom-up’ pressure on key fractions of capital within the local Labour Control Regime.

Farewell to flexicurity? Austerity and labour policies in the European Union

For the past decade the European Commission has urged EU member states to pursue ‘flexicurity’ policies aimed at achieving employment growth and social inclusion. However, the economic crisis and turn to austerity across the EU has presented the flexicurity model with a substantial challenge. This article argues that since 2008 labour policies across the EU have exhibited shared tendencies, but support for measures that might contribute to the achievement of the security aspects of flexicurity has been substantially weakened. In developing this argument, the article presents findings from a cluster analysis and detailed investigations of labour policies in EU member countries. The article also discusses the implications of the findings for comparative institutional analysis. It highlights differences in the approaches of countries that are commonly treated as members of the same institutional family, as well as similarities in the policies adopted by countries commonly associated with different ‘varieties’ of capitalism.

Economic and labour market change and policies: Before and beyond austerity in Europe: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe

European labour markets and labour market policies have been substantially affected by the economic crisis that unfolded after 2008. Following the initial increase in government spending aimed at offsetting the financial crisis, EU countries began, to varying degrees, to embrace austerity, cutting public spending while seeking to reignite economic growth by introducing structural reforms. This chapter examines the impact of the crisis on the labour markets of different EU member countries and the policies that have been adopted to address these impacts. The chapter also examines the consequences of the crisis for migration within the EU. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the current policy drift within the EU and the implications for the European Commission’s flexicurity agenda and ambitions relating to Europe 2020.