Events
The Work and Equalities Institute runs a wide variety of different events and activities, and collaborates with a range of stakeholders.
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
- Professor Richard Hyman (LSE) & Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck)
- 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.
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?
The value of human labour
This session presented an interdisciplinary discussion of critical issues confronting human labour under Covid-19.
The Covid-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on work and working lives. This has ignited an important debate on the value of human labour, which has increased awareness of the criticality of a wide range of jobs, many of which have been traditionally undervalued, both politically and socially.
The UK government’s definition of ‘key workers’ amount to 7.1 million adults, many of which are underpaid, working in insecure jobs and operating in public-facing roles. Among key workers, Black, Asian, and working-class groups make up a disproportionately large share, leaving them far more exposed to infection. Additionally, sectors dominated by female workers, such as retail and hospitality, have been hit hard by variations of lockdown, placing them at increased risk of both job loss and furlough. Uncertainty surrounding schooling and childcare provision adds an extra burden.
Speakers included:
Francesca Gains: Professor of Public Policy, Academic Co-Director of Policy@Manchester and member of the Greater Manchester Women and Girls’ Equality Panel.
Martí López-Andreu: Senior Lecturer in HRM and Employment Relations, Newcastle University, and an associate member of the Work and Equalities Institute.
Cristina Inversi: Research Fellow in Labour Law at Università Statale di Milano and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute Institute.
Tony Dundon: Professor of HRM and Employment Relations at Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, and Visiting Professor at the Work and Equalities Institute.
Sheena Johnson: Professor of Work Psychology and Wellbeing at the University of Manchester. She heads up the Fair Treatment at Work theme in the Work and Equalities Institute, and the Social Change and Ageing theme in the Thomas Ashton Institute, University of Manchester.
View presentation slides
- Gender, growth and devolution: Francesca Gains.
- Bogus self-employment and Covid-19: Martí López-Andreu.
- #HereToDeliver: Tony Dundon and Cristina Inversi.
The value of human labour 2
The second session continued the interdisciplinary discussion of critical issues confronting human labour under Covid-19.
Abbie Winton: final year doctoral researcher at the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research explores retail work and sociotechnical change, with a current focus on the crisis and the shaping impact this could have on the future of work within the sector.
Debra Howcroft: Professor of Technology and Organisation at the Work and Equalities Institute and Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment.
Jill Rubery: Professor of Comparative Employment Systems and Director of the Work and Equalities Institute.
Jo McBride: Professor at the University of Durham.
Miguel Martinez Lucio: Professor at the Work & Equalities Institute and Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment.
Anthony Rafferty: Professor of Employment Studies at the University of Manchester and a Deputy Director of the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI).
Stefania Marino: Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the University of Manchester.
View presentation slides
- Conflicting Covid narratives: Abbie Winton and Debra Howcroft
- COVID-19 and the importance of migrant labour in the UK: Stefania Marino, Anthony Rafferty and Miguel Martinez Lucio