Jean Jenkins

Professor, WISERD Co-Director Cardiff University

JenkinsJ1@cardiff.ac.uk +44 29208 75338

Jean Jenkins is a co-director of WISERD and Professor of Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School. Her research and teaching is mainly concerned with labour rights, social justice and industrial relations in global supply chains, with a particular focus on the international garment sector. She is an Associate of Labour Behind the Label and the Clean Clothes Campaign and has contributed to a range of practitioner reports as well as academic books and journal publications in her field.

Jean Jenkins Bio

Urgent Appeals: Data and Shared Learning ESRC GCRF Project

This is a project that is being undertaken by colleagues in Cardiff Business School and WISERD in collaboration with the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC). It built on an earlier ESRC IAA Award which was completed in March 2019. The focus of our work is to improve and develop the database used by CCC to record and…

Research Team: Jean Jenkins (Cardiff University), Katy Huxley (Cardiff University)

Trade unions, grass roots activism and solidarity

Trade unions, grass roots activism and solidarity uses case studies from Europe, India and the UK, to examine forms of worker representation that are directly related to the changing role of women in work and society, and associated issues of civic gain and expansion. Start date provided is that of the WISERD Civil Society Centre….

Research Team: Alex Bryson (Department of Social Science, UCL), Helen Blakely (Cardiff University), Jean Jenkins (Cardiff University), Rhys Davies (Cardiff University)

Operationalising Labour Rights: Access to Remedy at the Workplace

The research investigates workplace the grievances of garment workers employed in factories in the city of Bangalore, south India. Specifically it examines access to remedy at the workplace, and seeks to illuminate local conditions against the backdrop of national and international forms of regulation.

Research Team: Catriona Dickson (Cardiff University), Helen Blakely (Cardiff University), Jean Jenkins (Cardiff University), Rhys Davies (Cardiff University), Sonia De Saxe (Cardiff University)

Operationalising Labour Rights ESRC GCRF

This is an international research project funded by the ESRC under the remit of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). It is a collaboration between researchers at Cardiff Business School and WISERD and our partners at Cividep-India. The research is distinctive in being a longitudinal, workplace-centred study of access to remedy at the grass roots…

Research Team: Catriona Dickson (Cardiff University), Helen Blakely (Cardiff University), Jean Jenkins (Cardiff University), Rhys Davies (Cardiff University)

Journal Articles

Struggle in the Garment Sector

Theory & Struggle 121(1) pp 68-77 This article considers what struggle means for the international garment worker of today. The typical worker will most likely be a woman experiencing exploitative and harsh conditions in a sector where, internationally, employers generally seek to crush independent trade unionism. The article briefly reviews the garment industry’s history, including advances…

Journal Articles

In debt to the time-bank: the manipulation of working time in Indian garment factories and ‘working dead horse’

In this article we focus on the creation of debt relations between workers and their workplace as a tool of managerial control in the garment factories of Bangalore, India. The currency of indebtedness in this case is working time and our focus is the manipulation of hours of work at the base of the international,…

Inequalities, Localities, Work and Labour Markets | September 2016

Journal Articles

Mobilizing Protest: Insights from Two Factory Closures

This article draws on investigations of worker response to two factory closures to develop recent discussions around mobilization theory. With many shared characteristics between the factories, both located in the garment manufacturing sector, and with similar workforces and union organization, certain key distinguishing features between the two provide insights into why worker protest became effectively…

Inequalities, Work and Labour Markets | July 2012

News

WISERD researchers contribute to new book exploring union renewal

20th November 2024 | Helen Blakely, Jean Jenkins, Katy Huxley, Rhys Davies

Trade unions across the globe face a range of disruptions that are destabilising traditional structures, practices and strategies. A new book, Experimenting for Union Renewal, which includes a chapter by WISERD researchers on the international garment sector, sets out a novel approach centred on experimentation in response to these disruptions. Drawing on in-depth analysis of…

Civil Society, Data & Methods, Inequalities | Operationalising Labour Rights: Access to Remedy at the Workplace, Operationalising Labour Rights: Access to Remedy at the Workplace

Media

ITV coverage of the 1984-85 miners’ strike

8th March 2024 | Helen Blakely, Huw Beynon, Ian Rees Jones, Jean Jenkins, Martin O'Neill, Rhys Davies, Steve Davies

Following our recent event, ‘The past in the present: Reflections on coal mining and the miners’ strike 1984-85’ we were featured on a special ITV Wales programme, which aired on Monday 4 March and looked at how the events of 1984-85 continue to shape Wales’ economy, people, politics and communities. The coverage featured one of…

Civil Society, Work and Labour Markets

News

A decade after deadly Ali Enterprises fire, Pakistan’s garment workers report shocking lack of fire exits

19th July 2022 | Catriona Dickson, Helen Blakely, Jean Jenkins, Rhys Davies

New research from the Clean Clothes Campaign and WISERD at Cardiff University reveals the urgent need for expansion of the International Accord in Pakistan, a legally binding safety agreement to protect workers. 2022 marks 10 years since the horrific Ali Enterprises fire that killed over 250 garment workers in Pakistan yet rights for workers in…

Data & Methods, Inequalities, Work and Labour Markets | Operationalising Labour Rights ESRC GCRF

News

Professor Jean Jenkins to lead Wales TUC’s Future of Devolution and Work Commission

22nd October 2021 | Jean Jenkins

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…

Work and Labour Markets | Operationalising Labour Rights ESRC GCRF, Operationalising Labour Rights: Access to Remedy at the Workplace, Trade unions, grass roots activism and solidarity, Urgent Appeals: Data and Shared Learning ESRC GCRF Project

Blog

COVID-19 lockdown and the needs of garment workers in Bangalore, India

21st September 2020 | Jean Jenkins

Since October 2018, researchers from WISERD and Cardiff Business School have been working in partnership with NGO, Cividep-India. We have been analysing data on whether and how garment workers in Bangalore are able to gain access to remedy (that is, the steps that are taken to prevent, investigate, punish and redress business-related human rights abuses)…

Civil Society | Operationalising Labour Rights ESRC GCRF, Trade unions, grass roots activism and solidarity

News

Urgent Appeals: Data and Shared Learning

5th November 2019 | Jean Jenkins, Katy Huxley

WISERD researchers will continue to support the development of data repositories for strategic use within NGOs, having successfully obtained funding from the ESRC under the NGO Secondary Data Analysis Call. Dr. Jean Jenkins and Dr. Katy Huxley will build on previous work with partners the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), who campaign for decent work and…

Localities, Work and Labour Markets | Urgent Appeals: Data and Shared Learning ESRC GCRF Project

News

WISERD presents at Hay Festival 2019

12th June 2019 | Jean Jenkins

On Tuesday 28th May, Dr Jean Jenkins presented her research on employment rights at one of the world’s best-known literature festivals. Her talk, ‘Fashion – an Industry of Gross Exploitation’ explored the history of an industry that was long ago described as a ‘parasite industry’ as a result of the shocking mistreatment of its workers….

Inequalities, Work and Labour Markets | Operationalising Labour Rights ESRC GCRF

News

WISERD to present at Hay Festival 2019

4th April 2019 | Jean Jenkins

Jean Jenkins, Reader in Employment Relations at Cardiff University is to present at this year’s Hay Festival on Tuesday 28th May. Jean is working on a UK government-funded Global Challenges Research Fund project with WISERD, which investigates the availability of access to remedy for garment workers in today’s garment supply chain. Her presentation, Still…

Inequalities, Localities, Work and Labour Markets | Operationalising Labour Rights ESRC GCRF

WISERD Online Lunchtime Seminar

Understanding Unpaid Care: insecure, hidden work and precarious lives

14th December 2021

Presented by Helen Blakely and Jean Jenkins. This seminar sheds lights on the realities of unpaid care in contemporary society. Through various conceptions of work we explore the societal value placed upon this form of hidden work, which is characterised by insecurity, precarity and economic hardship. To join us, email wiserd.events@cardiff.ac.uk for the Zoom link.

WISERD Online Lunchtime Seminar

WISERD online lunchtime seminar- Lockdown in Bangalore: The Vulnerabilities of Indian Garment Workers

8th December 2020 | Online

Jean Jenkins and Rhys Davies, Cardiff University Since October 2018, researchers from WISERD and Cardiff Business School have been working in partnership with Cividep-India to examine whether and how garment workers in Bangalore are able to gain access to remedy at the workplace. On 24 March 2020, the study was temporarily brought to an…

WISERD Online Lunchtime Seminar

WISERD online lunchtime seminar- Human Resource Managers – First Line of Oppression? The case of the Indian Garment Sector

10th November 2020 | Online

Jean Jenkins, Cardiff University This presentation is based on the first findings of our research into access to remedy for workers in garment factories in Bangalore, India as part of the Operationalising Labour Rights Project that is funded by the ESRC Global Challenge Research Fund. The research involves systematic, survey-style recording of grievances that have…

Seminar

Hay Festival 2019: Still Fighting the ‘Parasite Industry’

28th May 2019 | Hay-on-Wye

Cardiff Lunchtime Seminar

Exploiting Labour in the Garment and Leather Sectors in India.

16th May 2018 | Cardiff

Presented by Jean Jenkins, Cardiff Business School and Gopinath Parakuni, General Secretary, CIVIDEP India. This seminar is part of the Cardiff WISERD Lunchtime Seminar series. If you are an external guest, please contact us (029 2087 9338) to confirm availability of places. For further information please contact WISERD.Events@cardiff.ac.uk

Conference

2017 International Labour Processes Conference

4th May 2017

Helen Blakely presented the paper “Collective memory and the labour movement: 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike” The Political and Economic Influence of the Cambodian Garment Sector Employers: Old Controls, Old Battles, New Battlegrounds Jean Jenkins Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet? Unpacking Policy Across the UK to Reduce the Number of Young People who are NEET Sue…

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