Over the past 30 years, labour relations, and, indeed, the entirety of workingclass politics in China, have been dramatically altered by economic reforms. In this review, we focus on the two key processes of commodification and casualization and their implications for workers. On the one hand, these processes have resulted in the destruction of the old social contract and the emergence of marke...

Drawing on the literature of social movements and emotions, this article analyses a case union-led movement against outsourcing in UK. Our focus is emotional processes collective identity formation culture new grassroot unions, addressing themes culture, political solidarity. Data consists participant observations, interviews, additional website media material. The results show that unions char...

This article examines the role of trade unions in the health service at workplace level under the Labour government’s modernisation agenda, and focuses on the shifting balance between forms of direct and indirect participation drawing on case studies of three acute hospital trusts. There has been a strong growth in forms of direct communication within the case study trusts and some increase in ...

Extensive labour subcontracting has decimated workers’ incomes and unions’ power on Zambia’s Copperbelt. In response, miners workers with permanent contracts provide each other daily material support, unions sell credit-based services to members, enabling their lives subsidising subcontractors’ unionisation. These interactions make low-wage resource extraction viable. They can therefore be unde...

Abstract Drawing on a series of interviews with key actors including representatives the main trade unions, this paper considers response unions in UK to emergence and growth platform work. Comparing partly different strategies adopted by traditional alternative respect representation workers’ interests, it demonstrates that unions’ choices have been shaped characteristics resources themselves,...