Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1,500 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
The crisis of work with which we are concerned in this book is a product of some notable crises that are at work, namely the harmful consequences of intensified neoliberal capitalism, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the escalating climate emergency. This final chapter considers the prospects for moving beyond crisis, starting with an emphasis on how work can be made fairer, healthier and greener, particularly by means of a more empowered workforce, represented by stronger trade unions. The chapter then examines the prospects of three alternative scenarios – upholding neoliberalism (‘business-as-usual’), reforming capitalism and rejecting capitalist relations – when it comes to moving beyond crisis.
It is impossible to view the news at present without hearing talk of crisis.
This timely book looks at how three major crises – the economy, pandemic and climate – are related to the crisis of work, making it more precarious, intense and unequal.
Providing an original and critical synthesis of recent trends in the field, expert scholars offer a programme for transcending the crisis of work.
Offering a timely contribution to understanding the important issues facing the world, this book presents an important new way of thinking about work in contemporary societies.
This chapter demonstrates how the crisis of work intersects with various other crises, in particular those relating to the economy and labour market and the unstable, turbulent and volatile nature of contemporary politics. These crises are not just consequences of the troublesome nature of paid employment but also contribute to it, fuelling the antagonism that lies at the heart of the contemporary crisis of work. The chapter starts by emphasizing the dysfunctional nature of the UK economy and the labour market, pointing to the connections between economic stagnation, labour shortages, weak earnings growth and the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ that escalated during the early 2020s. The chapter then explores the crisis-ridden nature of contemporary politics, including the crisis of democracy, and its intersections with the troublesome nature of work in the context of neoliberalization. A more volatile and turbulent political environment has arisen, one marked by waning support for traditional left-of-centre social democratic parties. Moreover, ‘populist’ far-right politics has increasingly thrived in settings where, because of neoliberalization, working people feel more insecure.
This chapter examines some of the key implications of the crisis of work, a crisis which has been profoundly affected by crises which are at work, namely the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of the escalating climate emergency. There is a strong sense that neoliberalism itself is in a state of crisis as it has become subject to increasing challenge, with its legitimacy diminished accordingly. One key response to this is neoliberalism’s increasingly authoritarian ‘turn’ in a context where demands have escalated for greater state intervention to promote sustainable employment, protect workers’ interests and tackle the climate emergency. The chapter also considers how organized labour has responded to the crisis, particularly the surge of strike activity in the aftermath of the pandemic, and what such contention means for understanding labour activism. Finally, the chapter examines the burgeoning climate activism movement and the repertoires of contention it uses, typically forms of non-violent direct action.
This chapter explains how developments in employment relations, understood as the nature of the relationship between employers and workers, have contributed to the current crisis of work. The crisis of employment relations is a product of an increasing disconnect. Managerial imperatives for short-term efficiency improvements, especially under neoliberal, financialized conditions, mean that labour becomes treated as a commodity, clashing with workers’ aspirations for decent work and to have their labour valued. The chapter explains how the commodification trend has been amplified by processes of automation. The COVID-19 pandemic accentuated the crisis of employment relations, given the increased aspirations of workers to be treated with respect and dignity and to have their contribution valued. The chapter critically examines the greater concern being exhibited in how employment relations can be managed in ways that are both socially, in the sense of promoting ‘good’ jobs and ‘decent’ work, and environmentally sustainable – especially in the context of the escalating climate crisis.
This chapter emphasizes how inequality and disadvantage continue to be profoundly important features of contemporary work and employment and explains how their presence contributes to the broader crisis of work. The chapter commences by focusing on a dimension which governments and employers generally overlook, namely the prevalence of disadvantage based on social class and the disparities experienced by people from working-class backgrounds. Underpinned by an intersectional approach, the remainder of the chapter then covers three further social cleavages – relating to gender inequality, racial and ethnic disparities in employment and the parlous position of young people, especially those from working-class backgrounds. The chapter explains that there is a crisis of equalities, as disadvantage at work has been exacerbated under conditions of intensified neoliberalism, a crisis which is related to other notable crises – relating to poverty, care, housing and the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting antagonisms help to fuel the contemporary crisis of work.
This chapter starts by emphasizing the importance of work and employment before outlining a conceptual approach based on Colin Hay’s (1999) distinction between ‘failure’ and ‘crisis’. The chapter explains how the current crisis of work has been produced by three crises which are at work – intensified neoliberalization and its consequences, the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the escalating climate emergency. While capitalism is structurally prone to periodic crises, the current crisis of work concerns the antagonism that has arisen between the degradation, in the sense of a process of worsening, of work and employment under conditions of intensified neoliberal capitalism – in the context of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the escalating climate emergency – and workers’ aspirations for decent work and to have their labour valued.
In this chapter, we explore the contemporary crisis in labour markets, a function of capitalist dynamics that neoliberalism has aggravated and the experience of COVID-19 not only illuminated but also reinforced. The rise of the platform economy and digital modes of intermediation has driven increased precarity to be sure. While in the UK in the post-war decades, centred on industrial forms of production, labour markets remained relatively stable, as the economy shifted to its post-industrial service-based forms in the late 1970s and 1980s, the occupational structures and the supply of labour fell out of kilter, causing unemployment to rise in former industrial areas such as South Wales and North East England. ‘Jobs for life’ were often replaced by low-paid, casualized and ‘flexible’ labour, and the growth of these forms of employment have contributed to increased labour market divisions and problems. We show how the 2007–8 global financial crisis, austerity, Brexit and the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated divisions and inequalities, influencing the crisis of work.
In this chapter, we identify what a crisis is and argue that under capitalism a permanent tendency towards crisis exists, exacerbated under neoliberal capitalist conditions, which engender other crises. We identify three types of crisis: empirical crises which can be seen and experienced by many (the cost-of-living crisis, for example); actual crises, particularly epidemiological crises (of which the COVID-19 pandemic is a striking example); and the escalating climate crisis. The crisis of work, and the interlinked crises at work which influence it, are underpinned by a profound ‘real’ crisis – the fundamental antagonisms produced by a system of (neoliberal) capitalism, under which work, the self and the environment are degraded and which creates instability and turbulence.
The chapter begins by explaining how the crisis of trade unionism, one that is particularly manifest in reduced union membership, is a product of neoliberalization, before examining how the trade unions have sought to respond to the crisis, including revitalization efforts. The chapter explains that after 2020 the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic provided unions with opportunities to build back stronger. It also highlights how unions have sought to demonstrate their relevance by engaging with environmental issues and responding to the climate crisis. Trade unions are playing a key role in facilitating a ‘just transition’ to a net-zero world by ensuring that workers’ interests are represented in the process of change, even though this has generated some notable tensions and challenges. As the chapter shows, unions are better able to demonstrate the important and effective contribution they make to advancing workers’ interests, not least by fomenting activism and challenging employers and governments.
