News and Blog

In this blog post Alan Felstead of Cardiff University discusses the publication of his new book Remote Working: A Research Overview.  The book provides an accessible overview of the history of remote working and the impact of the massive shifts in the location of work that have occurred because of the global pandemic. One of the…

Professor Alan Felstead’s book on the changing location of work will be published on 21 January. Working at home has exploded across the world over the last two years as politicians have advised, and sometimes instructed, those who can, work at home to limit the spread of coronavirus. Remote Working: A Research Overview assesses what impact…

We are delighted to announce that the call for papers is now OPEN for the WISERD Annual Conference 2022. WISERD Annual Conference 2022 Swansea University   Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th July 2022 The theme for our Annual Conference is ‘Civil society and participation: issues of equality, identity and cohesion in a changing social landscape’….

Dr Wil Chivers, recently appointed as a social science lecturer at Cardiff University, has presented findings from his WISERD research exploring the nature of work as a cycle courier in the gig/platform economy, at the Work, Employment and Society Conference 2021. The paper, On your bike: exploring the geography and leisure of work as a…

  Professor Jean Jenkins, WISERD Co-Director and Professor of Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School, has been appointed to lead an independent commission into the future of employment rights and devolution in Wales. The Future of Devolution and Work Commission, established by the Wales TUC, will be tasked with considering the impact that the current…

The WISERD report on Homeworking in the UK: Before and During the 2020 Lockdown has been cited in a government consultation on Making flexible working the default. The open consultation seeks views from individuals and businesses on proposals to reform flexible working regulations (The Flexible Working Regulations 2014). The report, by Alan Felstead of Cardiff…

In this third and final part of my blog series exploring the recent election of new Unite leader, Sharon Graham, I’ll be focusing on leverage campaigns and how they work. As a highly contentious topic, they form a key part of Graham’s strategy for organising Unite into a union of “strike ready workplaces”, but are…

In the second part of this three-post blog series exploring the recent election of new Unite leader, Sharon Graham, I’ll explain a bit more about her priorities and approach. I’ll focus more on one particular aspect of her strategy in the final part of the series: Leverage campaigns and how they work. I interviewed her…

With both the TUC and Labour holding annual conferences one after the other, much attention was on the unions’ newest leader, Sharon Graham. Her election as general secretary of the UK and Ireland’s most important union, Unite, came as a shock to most of the commentariat. In this, the first part of a three-post blog…

The 1984-85 miners’ strike has once again hit the headlines, despite ending 36 years ago. This time what has grabbed the media’s attention is a claim by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that Margaret Thatcher’s closure of the pits after the strike was part of a green, eco-strategy of the Conservative government. On a visit to…