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SI SPORT WEEK #4-1: Researcher’s profile: Deborah Butler discusses Careers in...
Deborah Butler: University of Warwick researcher studying careers and training in the horse racing industryMost people may have heard about Arkle, Red Rum, even Desert Orchid. How many people will have...
View ArticleSeafarers’ fatigue: new research by Cardiff University
The Seafarers International Research Institute (SIRC) in Cardiff have concluded a large-scale study of fatigue among seafarers and have produced a 30-minute movie which summarises their questions and...
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New collaborative labour history project
LabourStart, an internation news and campaigning website for trade unionists, has launched a new collaborative project and is asking labour history enthusiasts to help! They want to produce a ‘Today in...
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The death toll of postsocialist mass privatisation
In 2007-2009, I did over 50 interviews with Bulgarian maritime workers. I wanted to study the post-socialist transformations of institutions and practices of maritime labour – and how those changes...
View Article“My summer at an Indian call center” by Andrew Marantz
For our readers interested in the globalisation of labour and workers’ experiences, today’s reading is about call centres. Two documentary films, the 2005 film Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night and the...
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The Perils of Passion: Videogames, Higher Education and Precarious Labour
(CC BY 2.0 Marcin Wichary)The Jacobin Magazine has a fascinating article exploring the role played by a passion for gaming in facilitating the expansion and intensification of precarious labour within...
View ArticleThe academic ethics of strikebreaking
This insightful reflection on academic strikebreaking captures something very important about the contemporary politics of higher education:The disavowal at work here is stunning in its mundanity, the...
View ArticleBullshit jobs
Today I came across another good article by David Graeber about why there are so many really bad jobs around: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs.“In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that,...
View ArticleTrafficked Filipino Teachers in the USA
I just read an article about something new and shocking to me – qualified teachers of mathematics (and other subjects) from the Philiphines who are recruited on one-year contracts to teach in USA...
View ArticleThe emotional wellbeing of non-tenure track faculty
The Academe blog has an interesting post reporting on a new research paper which explores the emotional impact of the academic “caste system” that afflicts American higher education (and is present...
View ArticlePro-wrestling, unionisation and American capitalism
This fascinating article on Jacobin offers an historical persepctive on professional wrestling, a sport that “with its screaming neon lunatics, potbellied big daddies, and tasseled ‘ring rats’, has...
View ArticleRosemary Crompton’s Journey to Sociology
Rosemary Crompton (1942-2011) was a famous British sociologist of work who researched white-collar work, women’s employment, organisational careers and class, cross-national variations in gender...
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“Invisible Lives”: Romanian Night Workers in London
Global cities like London have an incessant rhythm of consumption that needs to be maintained around-the-clock. This short film shines a light on the invisible lives of people working at night whilst...
View ArticleThe Dark Side of Chocolate
Chocolate comes from cocoa beans, and about 70% of coco beans come from Ghana and the Ivory Coast in Africa. Coco bean plantations where it is grown and harvested have historically relied on child,...
View ArticleHow obsessive auditing produces “a profession which is incompatible with a...
80% of new teachers in 2005 were still teaching after their first year. In 2015 that has shrunk to just 62%, coupled with record numbers leaving mid career. In the intervening period, we’ve seen...
View Article1st Conference of the European Labour History Network – Worker’s Writing in...
14 – 16 December 2015, Torino/Turin (Italy) Workshop : Worker’s Writing in Europe (19th-20th centuries) A contribution to the cultural history of the worlds of work Within the framework of constructing...
View ArticleReclaiming ‘aspiration’ for the left
This is powerful stuff from Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, in his recent LSE lecture: I am not talking here about the aspiration of the delusional Del Boys – “This time next year...
View ArticleThe tragically incompetent elites of the centre left
This critique by Thomas Frank, on loc 2729 of his Pity the Billionaire, applies as well to proponents of the ‘third way’ within the Labour Party as it does to the leaders of the Democratic Party in...
View ArticleBounded autonomy in the workplace
In John Thompson’s Merchants of Culture, he describes what might be termed the bounded autonomy enjoyed by some editorial teams within publishing houses. From pg 128: the devolution of editorial...
View ArticleAn interview with Jamie Woodcock about Working the Phones
Find out more about the book here How did call centre emerge and proliferate? Would it be a mistake to see this as solely a matter of technological feasibility? The growth of call centres in the UK is...
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