Events

Fairness reimagined: Multidisciplinary perspectives about work

Date: 21 - 22 January 2025
Speakers: Professor Karen Niven, Professor Richard Hyman and Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, Professor Gary Younge
Venue: Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester

Overview

The conference aimed to bring together academics and practitioners to discuss how questions of fairness and equality are being reimagined to humanise and improve work in what remains a socially, politically and economically challenging landscape.

Fairness and equality are urgent matters in the changing context of work and are central to achieving growth, development and social justice. Against this backdrop, multidisciplinary dialogue between diverse actors and projects is essential to identify sustainable directions and discuss the challenges of articulating an inclusive and transformational language of fairness that is sustained by concrete initiatives, commitments and accountabilities to create a credible roadmap for positive, transformational change.

The conference looked to contribute to our understanding of these challenges, exploring and showcasing how workers, organisations, unions, regulatory actors and others are engaging with contested ideas about fairness and using windows of opportunity to mobilise views, approaches and action.

Programme and session updates

Day 1: Tuesday, 21 January 2025

• 9.45am: Keynote Address
  “Tolerating Evil: The Role of Bystanders in Workplace Bullying”
  By: Professor Karen Niven (Sheffield University Management School)
  Explore the 'darker' side of workplace relationships, focusing on bullying and aggression.
• 4pm: Launch of Work-Net International
  A global network of 31 research centres on work and employment will officially launch with:
  • Panel Discussions: The importance of interdisciplinary and comparative research.
  • 5.30pm: Formal launch by Professor Jill Rubery, Professor Duncan Ivison, and a senior ILO officer.
  • 6pm: Drinks reception and combined conference dinner.

Day 2: Wednesday, 22 January 2025

• 10.45am: Plenary on Social and Political Change in Work and Regulation
  Part 1:
  • Professor Richard Hyman (LSE) & Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck)
    Topic: The evolving agendas of the European Trade Union Confederation.
  • Professor Damian Grimshaw (King’s College London) & Andrea Marinucci (ILO)
    Topic: Insights from the latest ILO Flagship Report on collective bargaining.
  • Watch the video
• 4pm: Closing Keynote Address
  “Equal Opportunities, Not Photo Opportunities”
  By: Professor Gary Younge (University of Manchester)
  Dive into the role of diversity and representation as routes toward institutional change and equality.

For full sessions, rooms and timings, please read the conference schedule.

Please also read the Book of Abstracts.

If you have any questions, please contact fairwrc@manchester.ac.uk.

Civil society organizations and marketization in industrial relations systems: Evidence from a co-produced study in Yorkshire, England

On Thursday, 11 June, we held a seminar with invited speakers Abbie Winton and Charley Umney from the University of Leeds who presented on Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and how they don't just 'fill gaps' left by declining union coverage or strained public services. This seminar was organised through the institute's Regulation and Representation theme.

Abstract  

Civil society organizations (CSOs) are often considered to address gaps in industrial relations systems following union and state decline. We challenge and expand these debates through a study, co-produced and co-authored with CSO practitioners, examining CSOs’ industrial relations role through the lens of marketisation theory. We show how CSOs developed distinctive interventions around training provision, job matching and workplace intermediation, informed by close relationships with marginalized communities. These were not limited to reactive gap filling, but appeared a more proactive critical response to dysfunctions caused by the marketization of employment and welfare systems, including attempts to build alternative models.

Acknowledgements

We thank Stephen Mustchin and Ian Greer for advice and feedback prior to submission. We are also grateful to all participants in the workshop conducted as part of this research. Thank you to Mat Johnson for facilitating the visit and seminar.

 

Remembering the past, fighting for the future

On Thursday, 7 May in partnership with the People’s History Museum, Manchester, as part of their programme of activity exploring the history of strikes and solidarity, Holly Smith organised the event “Remembering the past, fighting for the future”. This marked the centenary of the 1926 General Strike. The evening started with a private view of the PHM’s new exhibition On the Line: 100 years of Strikes and Solidarity, which takes visitors through a century of industrial relations. Professor Ralph Darlington (Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14), Edd Mustill (Britain’s Revolutionary Summer: The General Strike of 1926), and Dr Ian Manborde of Equity, the union for the entertainment industry, then gave talks regarding the 1926 General Strike, its political context, and the relevance of strike action today.

The event was sponsored by the Work and Equalities Institute and the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA).

 

The Politics of Equality: the evolving nature of equality agendas at work in the UK and Europe in a context of political uncertainty

On Wednesday, 18 March, we held an event to disseminate the outcomes of the ESRC project ‘The Politics of Equality’ with contributions from the project team Miguel Martinez Lucio, Heather Connolly, Stefania Marino and Holly Smith, alongside a roundtable discussion bringing together experts from different national and organisational contexts. This interesting, engaging event welcomed a host of speakers and attendees who discussed the overview and findings of the project, workplace equalities in the UK, and Equality agendas in a comparative perspective.

 

Building worker voice and power in AI decisions: Three cases in the German ICT industry

On Thursday, 11 December, we held the WEI Annual Lecture, co-hosted with the Manchester Industrial Relations Society with invited speaker Professor Virginia Doellgast. Virginia discussed a working paper co-written with colleagues Tobias Kämpf (University of Labour, Germany) and Barbara Langes (Institute for Social Science Research, Germany).

Abstract

This paper compares works council initiatives to influence the adoption and deployment of AI-based tools in three German Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies, with the aim of investigating the conditions for workers to establish collective voice in these decisions. In all three case studies, works councils strengthened worker voice in decisions concerning the use of management-automating AI technologies in areas such as performance monitoring and workforce analytics. However, they faced more challenges in encouraging alternative approaches to skill development and employment restructuring associated with work-automating AI. Institutional and discursive power resources help to explain both their overall success in strengthening voice and different outcomes across AI applications.

 

Embedding intersectionality in research on work and employment

On Wednesday, 29 October, we held the first WEI Research Conversation Series workshops. This series aims to explore intersectionality in research as this brings both challenges and exciting opportunities for understanding inequalities in work, employment, and labour markets. Because there are no established methodological protocols or standard methods, researchers adopt different approaches – some focus on collecting intersectional data, others analyse existing data through an intersectional perspective, and some combine the two. This Research Conversation invites us to reflect on how researchers navigate these choices and what we can learn from their experiences.

This workshop was chaired by Jenny Rodriguez, Coordinator of the WEI EDI research stream with comments from Stefania Marino, Institute Co-Deputy Director for Research. Shreya Roy Choudhury, WEI PhD student participated as PhD researcher. Shreya’s research focused on the role of diversity networks or staff networks in tackling inequalities in UK organisations. Drawing on intersectionality, Shreya examined how networks’ positions within power hierarchies shapes their legitimacy and capacity for change; how internal governance affects whose voices are represented; and effectiveness of these networks in advancing equality. Shreya’s work contributes to current debates on symbolic vs. substantive inclusion and the evolving role of EDI structures in organisations. A second participant was visiting PhD student in Sociology Laia Nualart Moratalla from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Laia’s research focuses on unemployment and social exclusion among young people, with a particular emphasis on social ties and sociability. She approaches these issues from an intersectional perspective and through qualitative methodology, based on interviews with unemployed youth in Barcelona.

We also invited Natalie Bennett, Research Fellow with Healthier Futures, to participate. Natalie joined The University of Manchester in 2025 and prior to this, she held research associate posts at Newcastle University and the University of Sheffield. At Sheffield, Natalie supported research developing a novel quantitative method for analysing intersectional inequalities called 'MAIHDA'. Natalie has a background in human geography and social epidemiology and has broad interests in inequality, intersectionality and the social and structural determinants of health.

 

Fixing the Future: Co-operative and Trade Unions Working Together

Hosted by the WEI with Miguel Martinez Lucio, the University of Lancashire, the University of Bristol and the University of Nottingham, this event explored how trade unions and co-operatives can collaborate in the UK. Fragmentation of work and precariousness among workers are symptoms of a general crisis of the political system and social atomisation. The report evidences how we can organise to build solidarity, extend workers' control and challenge inequalities.

• What do trade unions add to co-operatives?
• What do cooperatives add to trade unions?
• What are the benefits of collaboration for a progressive economy and decent work?

Read more about the report.