Work on Demand project update
The Work on Demand project began almost two years ago, on 1 January 2018, and will run until the end of 2022. In year 1, a new team of researchers was recruited, an advisory panel assembled and a launch event held. We created a project website and twitter account (www.workondemand.co.uk; @uofgworkod) and made significant headway with the design of individual programmes of research.
In year 2, the postdoctoral researchers have made further progress with their individual research projects. Gregoris Ioannou, whose project focuses on young, precariously employed hospitality workers, spent several months conducting fieldwork in Greece and the UK. He presented aspects of his research at conferences in Vancouver, Manchester and Dusseldorf, and wrote a paper, currently under review, on the communicative power of trade unionism examining labour law, political opportunity structure and social movement strategy. Additionally Gregoris carried out work on the liberalisation of professions, examining the experience of pharmacies in Greece and Cyprus, and was invited by ETUI to join a new publication project in 2020 on the condition of trade unionism in all EU member states.
Alessio Bertolini’s project investigates the ideas and strategies used by different policy actors and stakeholders in the regulation of gig work in the UK and Italy. He completed his fieldwork in the UK in early summer and is currently carrying out equivalent work in Rome. In London, he was a visiting scholar at University College London and in Rome, at Università La Sapienza. In 2019, Alessio participated in international conferences in Valparaiso ,Chile, and Dusseldorf. He wrote a paper on union strategies in regulating gig work in the UK. Additionally, he published a monograph based on his PhD dissertation as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Work, Employment and Welfare series and co-authored a chapter (with Daniel Clegg) on the relation between access to social protection and immigration status in the UK.
Eleanor Kirk’s project concerns the legal consciousness and ideological practices of the HR profession. In 2019 she conducted interviews, data analysis and desk research, presented her work at international conferences in Berlin and Vienna, and gave invited talks in Leeds, Newcastle, London and Manchester. Eleanor was nominated for the Sage Prize for Innovation and Excellence in Sociology. She joined the executive board of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association, and the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society. She wrote a review article of Hertogh’s (2018) Nobody’s Law, and a draft article on juridification and laypeople’s interactions with labour law. In addition, Eleanor has published papers in Capital and Class and Social Policy and Society. She has contributed to the drafting a Scottish Charter of Workers’ Rights with the Institute of Employment Rights Scotland, and has supported STUC research examining precarious work.
Ruth Dukes, the PI, published two papers this year. ‘The Economic Sociology of Labour Law’ (46(3) Journal of Law and Society 396-422) sets out the interdisciplinary approach to the study of labour law that the Work on Demand team seek to adopt and develop over the course of the project. In ‘Regulating Gigs’ (Modern Law Review, published online October 2019), Ruth considered the gig economy and particularly its treatment by Jeremias Prassl in a 2018 volume, Humans as a Service (Oxford). Using the lens of the economic sociology of labour law, she argued that gig work requires to be analysed in its particular political-institutional context. Like any kind of working relation, gig work is shaped by social policy widely understood (employment law and policy, workplace regulation and enforcement mechanisms, taxation), and by the social integration and organization of sectoral and occupational workforces. Throughout the year, Ruth presented her research in Lancaster, Frankfurt, Leicester, Birkbeck, New York and Madrid, and in Amsterdam as part of the lecture series of the Centre for the Study of European Contract Law. Together with Wolfgang Streeck, she wrote a paper on ‘Labour Constitutions and Occupational Communities’, to be presented in December 2019 at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Anthropology.
Weekly or fortnightly group meetings continued throughout 2019 and again provided a forum for planning, reporting back, and reading and discussing books and articles of interest to us all. In the autumn term, we invited two colleagues from other Schools in the University to share research: Dr Valerie Wright from Economic History and Prof Melanie Simms from the Business School. In September, Lydia Hayes visited us from the University of Kent and presented a lecture on ‘Criminalising care workers. A critique of prosecution for ill-treatment or wilful neglect’. In addition to the Work on Demand team, group meetings were also attended by a visiting scholar from Shanghai, Dr Ou Lin; by Dr Vera Pavlou, Lecturer in Labour Law at the University of Glasgow; and by Aude Cefaliello, a PhD in the School of Law and research assistant on the project.
The team now look forward to year 3 when we will be joined by two new PhD students. Ou Lin will return to us from China to begin a PhD on gig economy couriers in Shanghai and Beijing. Vera Hayibor comes from Ghana to study the rights of immigrant women in the UK to start up small businesses. In September 2020, we plan to host a two day conference in Glasgow, with speakers from throughout Europe and the US. Details to follow!
