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Central London BUIRA Seminar: The Changing Labour Contract Dr Alexandra Oeser (Université Paris Nanterre) From local to international: wiping out the employer? Dr Simon Joyce (University of Leeds) on the Future of Work and the Gig Economy Discussant: Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck College London) Friday 26 January 2018, 10.30am - 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS (opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube) Room C181 (lunch C287) For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) This regular monthly seminar is focused on the changing labour contract and employee-employer relations in Europe and we are fortunate to have two expert speakers as well as Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick to lead the discussion. Alexandra Oeser, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Université Paris Nanterre, will tackle the question of the consequences of the financialization of global firms for local fights for employment and for syndicalist strategies. She focusses on the example of the Molex company, which bought a local factory in southern France in 2004 only to relocate it to China in 2008-2009. The fight against the closure of the factory in rural France obeyed different norms from those of the closure itself, decided in Chicago. She will also talk about forms of masculinity used on both levels in the fight, and their consequences for work structures and political mobilization. Alexandra works on questions of political socialization, whether in education (schools), in the workplace or during political mobilizations. Gender and class and their interaction are central to this work and have more recently been explored through analysis of forms of masculinity. Her publications include: "Quand ils ont fermé l'usine. Lutter contre les délocalisations dans une économie globalisée" (When they closed the factory. Fighting against delocalizations in a globalised economy), Agone, 2017; and 'Politics, Work and the Family: Gendered forms of mobilization of working class women in Southern France'. Modern and Contemporary France, n°22, 2012 Simon Joyce will speak about the mediation of paid work via online platforms. Companies such as Uber, Upwork, Taskrabbit, and Amazon Mechanical Turk have pioneered this method of organising a workforce, which is widely expected to grow in importance in coming years. This talk will present research investigating the nature and extent of platform work in Europe, and examine its implications for working lives and for the regulation of employment relations. It will also discuss conceptual and theoretical challenges that these developments pose for for industrial relations scholars and researchers. Simon has researched platform work in his present position of Research Fellow at Leeds University Business Schoothere as well as at the University of Hertfordshire, where he completed his PhD entitled "Revisiting shop stewards and workplace bargaining: opportunities, resources and dynamics in two case studies". He is co-author of the recently published research for the European Parliament on The Social Protection of Workers in the Platform Economy http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/614184/IPOL_STU(2017)614184_EN.pdf Rebecca Grumbell-McCormick, has kindly agreed to act as discussant. Rebecca co-authored (with Richard Hyman), 'Resisting labour market insecurity: Old and new actors, rivals or allies?' Journal of Industrial Relations, 2017, as well as Trade Unions in Western Europe (2013). This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend this event. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> or 020350 66528 The University of Westminster is a charity and a company limited by guarantee. Registration number: 977818 England. Registered Office: 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW. This message and its attachments are private and confidential. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and remove it and its attachments from your system.