Research in the Fields of Labour, Employment and Work: What Do We Need Now?

Friday 30th May, 2025, 10-4. Room 282 (Hot house), Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow.

Glasgow Labour Employment and Work (GLEW) warmly invites you to a day event showcasing research led out of the University of Glasgow. The event will take place on Friday, 30 May 2025, from 10:00 AM to 16:00 PM.

The chosen theme for the event is: Research in the Fields of Labour, Employment and Work: What Do We Need Now? The event seeks to explore the possibilities and limits of the current political context, shaped in part by the significant strike wave of 2023 and the election of a UK Labour Government in 2024. It will focus on emerging issues of concern to researchers and practitioners in Scotland and more widely.

In addition to talks from network researchers on the employment rights bill, organising and resistance, precarious work and wellbeing, immigration regimes and migrant workers, there will be an opening address from Dave Moxham, Deputy General Secretary, STUC, and we will be joined by speakers from the Department for Business and Trade responsible for impact assessment of the ERB, and the Worker Support Centre.

Lunch will be provided. Please register for either catering purposes (in-person) or to receive a link for online attendance.

For those attending remotely, please find the Zoom meeting details below:

Join Zoom Meeting: https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/82397221607?pwd=ra8Z5bydT8Eb6urJlJjJah6yNczqki.1

Meeting ID: 823 9722 1607

Passcode: 156383 

Outline of the Day

10-10.10 Intro & welcome

10.10 -10.30 Dave Moxham (STUC) Opening address

10.30- 11.30 The Employment Rights Bill papers

Mel Simms- The ERB and Devolution

Muireann McDermott- Reimagining Labour Law and the Rule of Law in a Post-Breach Context

Conor McCormack (Department for Business and Trade)- Impact Assessment of ERB.

11.30-45 Break

11.45- 12.30 Precarity, wellbeing and ambiguous employment

Scott Hurrell- It’s (not) getting better all the time: Early-career precarity and wellbeing scarring in the ‘Covid-19’ graduate cohort.

Lisa Chamberlain- A cut above the rest? Work and employment dynamics in small hair salons

12.30-1.00 Lunch

1.00- 2.00 Immigration regimes, migrant workers and regulatory enforcement

Kate Botterill, Bozena Sojka, Daniela Sime (U of Strathclyde) and David McCollum (U of St Andrews)- Young Europeans in post-Brexit Britain: an intersectional reading of privilege and precarity among young migrants in work.

Margarita Permonaite, Valeria Ragni, Graham O’Neill and Caroline Robinson (Worker Support Centre)- Access to (in)justice for workers on tied and temporary visas and the fight for rights.

2.00-2.10 Break

2.10-2.55 Trade Union strategy and organising

Michael MacNeil- Senior union bureaucrats in the UK union movement: Their latitude to introduce change, revitalise workers’ power, and promote class-based interests.

Dr Genevieve Coderre-LaPalme (with Ruth Reaney, Queens University)- The role of identity and legitimacy in shaping union strategic choice

2.55-3.05 Break

3.05-3.50 Authoritarianism and resistance

Maha Rafi Atal - Corporate responses to Trumpism

Julieta Lobato- Neoliberalism, Right-wing populism and in Argentina