2023
CREW Five Day Executive Training
18th - 23rd September 2023
A five-day executive training on the development of effective collective bargaining in the Nigerian maritime sector took place at the Centre of Research on Employment and Work (CREW) in the University of Greenwich, London, the United Kingdom, between September 18 and 23, 2023. The weeklong intensive programme was attended by the Tripartite Stakeholders in the Nigerian Maritime Industry, drawn from the National Association of Stevedoring Organisations (NASO), the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the Nigeria Port Authority (NPA), and the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria's (MWUN) President General and Deputy President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju, and Mr. Bolaji Sunmola of the NASO. The programme drew scholars and industry experts at both the professorial and doctorate levels across the United Kingdom and included the Regional Advisor on Maritime Labour Convention (Africa) who is also a Member of the Advisory Board of CREW, Dr Amos Hosea KUJE, as one of the facilitators.
The tailored maritime course addressed changes that prompted demands for new forms of tripartite collective bargaining dialogue in the maritime sector and the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The course builds knowledge and skills and prepares participants for how they can engage in a constructive tripartite discussion for sustained industrial peace, harmony, improved productivity, and efficiency at the ports, terminals, and jetties towards the economic development of Nigeria.
The participants carried out group exercises, conducted analysis, and made presentations on case studies. They were trained on how to identify what should constitute a collective bargaining agreement in line with national and international regulations, conventions, standards, and guidelines. The role of social dialogue and conflict resolution mechanisms was explored, and how they can contribute to collective bargaining agreements was discussed.
According to Professor Sian Moore, the Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW) at the University of Greenwich became the ideal place for the program because of its international recognition as the Centre of Excellence (CoE) on Work and Employment. The university generates critical and impactful research that explores the current, future, and political economies of work and employment at the organisational and workplace levels, but within wider national and international contexts. CREW focuses on work’s integral components, management and labour, as fundamental aspects of businesses and their supply chains. It recognises the intersectional experience of labour and work in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, migration status, and class, and explores the representation and organisation of workers. Labour and the management of labour, and their interaction, are fundamental to business and businesses, serial economic crises, the emergence, and implications of in-work poverty, and current industrial unrest. Yet labour and its value are often invisible, despite work being a source of identity, social relationships, care, service, personal fulfilment, and citizenship as Budd puts it, ‘work matters’ (2011). Work is an essential part of people’s lives and is key to social cohesion, mobility, and integration. CREW work aims to understand the social and material structures through which security, insecurity, and discrimination at work are mediated and distributed. Inter-disciplinary, incorporating members with expertise in business and human resource management, organisational behaviour, marketing, organisational psychology, political economy, international development, work sociology, business ethics, labour geography, social psychology, psychotherapy, and history.
Members of CREW play active roles in several national and international academic and professional bodies including the British Association of Management, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, the Philosophy of Management Conference, and the International Labour Process Conference. Participants also visit historical maritime sites, including the Greenwich Meridian Time Zone, the Cutty Sark, and the National Maritime Museum.
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CREW Seminar
14th June 2023, 1-3 pm
The past months have seen a resurgence of labour and wave of industrial action in many countries. This seminar brings together trade unionists and academics to explore strikes in China and Hong Kong, France, Italy and the UK and international actions by teaching unions. It looks at the factors behind the resurgence, the changing composition of unions, the nature of action and prospects for unions internationally. This online seminar is sponsored by the academic journal Work in the Global Economy (Bristol University Press) and the Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW, University of Greenwich).
Speakers:
Millie Apedo-Amah Executive Committee Member The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT)
Dr. Chris Chan Senior Lecturer in Human Resource & Organisation Studies, Royal Holloway University of London
Celia Dignan International Secretary, National Education Union
Dr. Elisa Pannini Lecturer in Human Resource Management University of Greenwich
Dr. Ruth Reaney Lecturer in Human Resource Management, University of Glasgow
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Book launch ‘Marketization’ by Charles Umney and Ian Greer
26th May 2023, 5-7pm.
CREW are proud to welcome back Prof Charles Umney (University of Leeds) and Prof Ian Greer (Cornell), both formerly of Greenwich Business School, discuss their new book 'Marketization' (Bloomsbury).
Learn about the book:
Marketization: How Capitalist Exchange Disciplines Workers and Subverts Democracy
How do markets function? Who creates, shapes and organizes them? And what do they mean for the relationship between labor and capital? Marketization examines how the state and capital use markets to discipline the working class. Ian Greer and Charles Umney provide a comprehensive overview of the European political economy, from the European Commission to the workplace, to show how neoliberal principles translate into market mechanisms and reshape the lives of workers.
Drawing on dozens of conversations with policymakers, administrators, businesses, workers, and trade unionists across many European countries, Greer and Umney unpack marketization. They go beyond liberal theories that see markets as natural forms of economic organization and broad-brush left critiques of neoliberalism, looking behind the scenes in the current European political economy to examine the practicalities of how markets are created and manipulated by employers, policymakers and bureaucrats in pursuit of greater profitability. Far from leading to greater freedom, these processes often override the rights of individuals, degrade the status and security of workers, and undermine democratic accountability.
The event is going to be followed by a panel discussion Discussion, Q&A and refreshments.
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Diversifying Talent in Hospitality – CREW and TMRC Collaboration Seminar
19th April, 2023: 2-5pm.
This public event is the first joint seminar between the Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW) and the Tourism and Marketing Research Centre (TMRC) at the University of Greenwich. The joint CREW and TMRC seminar is a free public event open to practitioners, academics, researchers and students.
The current labour market in the UK is experiencing turbulent times. Employers and businesses are facing difficulties attracting, recruiting, and retaining skilled staff. Hospitality industry is one example of extreme labour shortages and increasing number of hard-to-fill vacancies. During this interactive and collaborative event, contemporary topics around the theme of ‘Diversifying Talent in Hospitality’ will be discussed to offer a clear agenda to generate some insights and collaborative ideas that will inform work and employment research related to hospitality and human resource management practices and development in workplace settings.
The participants will have an opportunity to learn and discuss with our keynote speakers from both academic and practitioner sides about the issues around labour shortages and some insights into talent diversification in hospitality. There will also be an opportunity to hear about employment experiences of our students from hospitality and human resource management programmes.
Keynote speakers:
Professor Sian Moore - Professor in Employment Relations and Human Resource Management and Director of the Centre for Research on Work and Employment (CREW), University of Greenwich
Professor Tom Baum - Work, Employment and Organisation, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
Emily Kok - HR Advisor at InterContinental London Park Lane Umbrella Training - UK’s nationwide training and apprenticeship provider for the hospitality and corporate sectors.
Greenwich student voices:
Johnathan Martinez – Our student from BA Hospitality Management
Lisseth M Ribera Gutierrez – Our student from BA (Hons) Human Resource Management
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CREW Seminar: How will the labour market change in 2023?
23rd March 2023, 2-4pm
Even in a weakened economy the labour market remains tight, with high levels of vacancies. In December the ONS said that unemployment had risen slightly to 3.7%, but remained close to a historic low. As a consequence of covid, changes in migration and supply chain problems we have seen a reduction in employment levels. Inflation has spiralled. The downward pressure on wages has particularly affected a large number of professional women employed in the public sector - from nurses, doctors, radiographers to teachers and social workers. There are huge vacancy levels in the NHS. What are the key points of change? And how will problems be resolved?
Our speakers:
Tony Wilson, Director, Institute for Employment Studies (IES)
Kate Bell, Assistant General Secretary, Trade Union Congress (TUC)
Sumit Dey-Chowdhury, Senior Economist, Office for National Statistics (ONS)
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The Menopause Revolution at the Workplace
7th March 2023, 3-5pm
Increasing attention is being given to the topic of menopause and work. Women experiencing the menopause are the UK’s fastest growing work demographic. However, due to taboo, menopause remains a challenge and is often not addressed within the organisational context. According to Verdonk et al (2022), menopause is not seen as an organisational and socially relevant issue and instead as a woman’s individual problem. This lack of knowledge and interventions at work directly affect women’s position in the labour market as they are not offered workplace interventions or professional support especially in times of increasing work intensification, an ageing labour market and labour market shortages.
Sponsored by the Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW) at the University of Greenwich and in line with International Women’s Day, our hybrid seminar brings together current initiatives at work on support, reasonable adjustments and guidance for tackling menopause at work.
Our speakers are:
Deborah Garlick is the CEO of Henpicked: Menopause in the Workplace, founder of Henpicked.net and author of Menopause: the change for the better. Her team have been working with UK-wide and international organisations for over 7 years to make it easier for them to introduce the right training, policies and practices to raise awareness, education and support of this critical area.
Maureen Montague works in the Greenwich Business School as an Executive Officer. Maureen raised awareness of the Menopause across the University in the autumn of 2020, she was awarded the Positive Impact Award in June 2022 for the impact she made to menopausal women and colleagues by starting the conversation.
Anna Radley is the Organisation Development and Engagement Manager at the University of Greenwich. Anna supported the work Maureen achieved by creating a small project team to embed awareness of the Menopause and signpost the support available through guidance, resources and training for line managers and colleagues.
Theresa Winters is an experienced HR leader with a passion for creating cultures where individuals can truly thrive. Her current role is Senior Manager, Employee Experience for Santander UK leading a team responsible for the development of a compelling employer brand and overall employee experience proposition. Theresa also leads the menopause programme of support at Santander which started in 2019.
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Intersectionality in work, industrial relations and organising - US and UK perspectives
26th January 2023, 3-4.30.
The discipline of work, industrial relations and organising has started to explore how it can become intersectional. This presents particular challenges where radical scholarship has been rooted in the conflict between labour and capital defined by class. Intersectionality is a crucial methodological tool in qualitative research, since individual narratives may not neatly differentiate between or disentangle class, gender, age, race, ethnicity or sexuality. Yet in analysis there may be tensions between intersectionality and macro-theories of class, race and gender. Similarly, there may be confusion between social category and social identity and their individual and collective articulation and organisation. Tamara Lee and Maite Tapia (2022) have recently proposed that while studies now reference intersectionality in relation to organising, the field lacks a theoretical construct that can address ‘identity-based fragmentation’ – they integrate critical race and intersectional theory with industrial relations scholarship.
Sponsored by Work in the Global Economy and the Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW) at the University of Greenwich, our online seminar brings together US and UK scholars to discuss the challenges of intersectional approaches to work, industrial relations and organising.
Speakers:
Tamara Lee is Assistant Professor in Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the intersection of labor and racial justice, cross-movement solidarity building and the impact of radical adult education on workplace democracy. Her work also focusses on popular participation of workers in macro-level political and economic reform in Cuba and the United States.
https://smlr.rutgers.edu/faculty-staff/tamara-lee
Adia Wingfield is the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts & Sciences and Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity at Washington University in St. Louis. She specialises in research that examines how and why racial and gender inequality persists in professional occupations, as well as the ways intersections of race, gender, and class affect social processes at work.
https://sociology.wustl.edu/people/adia-harvey-wingfield
Jenny K Rodriguez is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at Alliance Manchester Business School and lead of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion theme at the University of Manchester’s Work & Equalities Institute. Her research explores intersectional inequality in work and organisations, and the regulation of work and employment in the Global South. Her published work has reported on these issues in Latin America, the Hispanic Caribbean and the Middle East.
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/jenny.rodriguez
Sian Moore is Professor in Employment Relations and Human Resource Management, Director of Research on Employment and Work at University of Greenwich, and co-Editor in Chief of Work in the Global Economy. Her research has explored the inter-relationship of gender, sexuality, race and class among cabin crew in the British Airways dispute of 2009–2011, evaluating the utility of intersectional analysis in the context of industrial action. She has also published on union equality structures in the Fire Brigades Union and the challenge of democratic legitimacy.
https://www.gre.ac.uk/people/rep/faculty-of-business/sian-moore