Labour Government Research Articles

Nurturing the Capabilities to Aspire, Voice and Realise Aspirations: A Theoretical Analysis of the Transformative Potential of the National Health Service in England

ABSTRACT This article contributes to understanding the transformative potential of institutions, such as the National Health Service in England (NHS), to engage those they serve, nurturing their aspirations and capabilities to support human flourishing. In pursuing a “fully engaged” scenario as described by Derek Wanless in Securing our Future Health (2002), an argument is made for nurturing the capabilities to aspire, voice and realise aspirations. The fully engaged scenario aspires towards higher levels of public engagement in relation to individual and community health and wellbeing; more efficient use of resources; overall improvements in health outcomes and a reduction in health inequalities. The discussion offers a critical evaluation of the recent emergence of a personalised care approach in the NHS in England, and specifically the role of Health and Wellbeing Coaches, in supporting this endeavour. Core capability and aspiration concepts are explicated to develop a conceptual framework to appraise the transformational potential of personalised care approaches in the NHS in England. The ensuing analysis is especially relevant as the recently elected Labour government prepares for a new ten-year plan for NHS reformation.

Difference between Global South cities: Mexico City, Freetown and the global division of urban informal labour

This work pursues a new explanatory framework for understanding some of the variance and homogeneity of informal work between cities in the Global South. Rooted in a materialist approach to informality, it seeks to explain the dynamics of informal work in different urban contexts via a novel application of the global division of labour, termed the global division of urban informal labour. Through a comparative analysis of the urban labour regimes of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Mexico City, Mexico, the work argues that each city’s respective location within the global capitalist system largely determines the nature of their informal economies. It posits that a city’s informal labour regime is shaped by whether a city’s economy is predominantly defined by financial, industrial or extractive capital, and explores the ramifications of the financialised economy of Mexico City and the extractivist economy of Freetown for shaping informal work in each city. Such an approach attempts not only to explain urban and labour regime variance but also to highlight the essential and foundational nature of informal work in global capitalism today. It also seeks to aid in the task of recentring capitalism and class considerations into understandings of the internal and external dynamics of Global South cities in general.

Light and Shadow of the Digital Factory: Response to the Comments

Abstract This response to the comments on The Digital Factory discusses why and how the concepts of the digital factory and digital Taylorism have been applied in the book, as well as the question of the relationship between digital control and workers' resistance to algorithmic management technologies. While agreeing with the comments that point to the limitations of the concepts used, this response argues that these can be productive precisely by drawing our attention to aspects that are otherwise difficult to bring to light. In terms of the potential for workers' resistance, many collective and individual forms of such resistance remain possible in labour regimes under algorithmic management, as well as in other coexisting labour regimes.

‘Chifley spells security’: Tracing the Origins of Contemporary Australian Security Discourse

Strong claims have been made about the significance of the concept of security in modern governance. The study of security has developed from its post-1945 focus on the state’s role in securing the population from external threat to include broader and critical perspectives, which seek to embed the concept of security in its cultural and historical contexts. This article traces the origins of contemporary security culture in Australia to the first half of the twentieth century. It examines the concept of security from debates about the provision of national insurance and the amelioration of the suffering of the Great Depression to the Curtin and Chifley Labor governments’ postwar reconstruction program in the 1940s. The article argues that the origins of national security culture in the present lie in mid-twentieth-century debates about the role of the state in securing the population from economic deprivation, unemployment and ill health.

Historicizing the “Beast-Man”

This essay surveys the emergence and trajectory of the historiography of slavery as it has at times intersected with human-animal studies. First, the essay traces the historiography of slavery from 1918 to the 1980s to question how historians wrote about both chattel slavery as a regime of labor involving animals and the dehumanizing function of slavery as an economic system. Second, the essay looks at how the “animal turn,” beginning in the 1980s, has since influenced how social, intellectual, and environmental historians have written about slavery and human-animal relationships. Finally, the essay concludes by making the case that animal historians interested in slavery should pay attention to ongoing debates and discussions in Black studies involving the philosophy of humanity.

Brexit and labour governance: Authoritarian innovations in the United Kingdom

The concept of authoritarian innovations encourages a focus on authoritarian change at the meso-level of governance. At the same time, this article argues that such meso-level change can be best understood by taking into account macro-level (authoritarian) developments. In the UK, Brexit has generated a broader macro-level authoritarian innovation, creating cumulative effects at the level of politics, governance and jurisdiction. This macro-level development is reflected in authoritarian innovation at the meso-level of labour governance. The article first explains how Brexit relates to three key drivers for authoritarian innovations in labour governance, namely, general authoritarian inclination, neoliberal policy and electoral populist motivations. It then analyses the main authoritarian innovations in labour governance adopted since Brexit, namely, the approach to the legacy of EU protective standards and new policy measures limiting the right to strike. Using a discourse on democracy, acting against the ‘undemocratic EU’ and relying on ‘the referendum mandate’, UK governance post-Brexit is characterised by reducing pluralist processes and even parliamentary debate, enabling these authoritarian innovations. At the same time, due to the inherent contradictory forces inspiring Brexit, the long-term impact of Brexit on labour governance will likely remain modest.

Authoritarian innovations in the Polish industrial relations: From liberal to illiberal illusory corporatism?

The article addresses the problem of ‘authoritarian innovations’ in labour governance in Poland, understood as new government practices that maintain the semblance of social dialogue while limiting the influence of unions. Unlike most studies that analyse authoritarian practices since the right-wing Law and Justice Party came to power in Poland in 2015, this analysis takes a longer historical perspective. Drawing from Ost's thesis of ‘illusory corporatism’, it argues that a fundamental element of neoliberal transformation in Poland after 1989 was the introduction of weak tripartite institutions used to suppress social conflicts while complying with international standards. Based on documentary analysis and 37 expert interviews with social partners, the article shows how authoritarian innovations introduced in the 1990s have undermined worker participation and tripartite social dialogue in the context of two crises: the global financial crisis of 2008–12 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–22. Comparing the role of social dialogue in shaping the responses of liberal and illiberal governments to these different external shocks, the analysis demonstrates the continuity and evolution of authoritarian innovations in labour governance in Poland and their implications for theoretical debates arounds corporatism.

Authoritarian innovations: a fresh perspective on the state's role in labour governance

How do we understand the efforts of governments across the political spectrum to undermine trade unions in ways that do not involve overt repression? This article introduces a special issue that examines this question through the lens of authoritarian innovations, a political science concept that draws analytical attention to practices that purport to embody democratic principles but actually undermine democratic participation. As applied to the labour and industrial relations field, the concept of authoritarian innovations refers to new governance practices that appear to advance labour rights but, in fact, weaken or subvert workers’ genuine, democratic and collective participation in the workplace, in labour institutions, and in the broader polity. As this article argues, this concept allows us to move beyond broad-brush assessments of the labour governance practices associated with different kinds of political regimes to a recognition that democratic and authoritarian states alike may act in ways that appear democratic but are, in reality, quite the opposite.

Prison labour as punishment

Mandatory prison labour is not classed as part of the offender's punishment. The sentence is the years to be served in prison and on licence in the community. I argue that there is reason for reclassifying or reforming the current regime of prison labour in England and Wales. The argument for reclassification draws analogy to the place of labour in community orders and suspended sentences. If there is reason to reclassify prison labour, consideration of proportionality would require significantly reduced time in prison. However, there are important difficulties with establishing what reduction should be offered and operationalising any such reduction in a fair way. If prison labour is instead to be reformed so as to be non-punitive, this may require an overhaul, giving the offender a choice of whether to work and wider labour protections. Prison labour is lost when classed as neither punishment nor as employment.

Evaluating clean electricity transition progress across UK political pledges and G7 countries

The transition towards clean electricity is central to global decarbonisation. Countless metrics are used to assess national electricity transition efforts, which hinders understanding and comparison between nations or political party pledges. This study instead proposes three simple metrics: clean generation share, gross, and net carbon emissions intensity. It uses them to provide the first evaluation of the 2024 Clean Energy Mission (CEM) proposed by the UK's newly-elected Labour Government, which has strengthened ambition for wind and solar power capacity. We compare the CEM to previous political pledges, finding it could reduce national electricity generation emissions by 17 MtCO2 in 2030, equivalent to a two percentage point increase in the UK's 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). We also use these metrics to compare past efforts and future pledges across the G7 countries, finding that the CEM progresses the UK from having the lowest share of clean electricity in 2010 to the highest by 2030. The UK must increase its pace of clean electricity uptake and decarbonisation by a factor of 1.5–2 to meet its 2030 targets; compared to a factor 4–6 acceleration required by Germany and the US. The paper provides an innovative, simple and replicable framework for assessing the impact of political pledges or national targets for the power sector, and for comparing efforts to decarbonise electricity between countries and over time.

What does the new Labour government mean for infrastructure – and what are the ICE’s priorities for engagement?

Laura Cunliffe-Hall is Lead Policy Manager in the ICE’s Policy and External Affairs team. She discusses the ICE’s plans for engaging the new government and the announcements of note for infrastructure and development.

Government ideology and labour policy reform in good times and bad

ABSTRACT Which governments implement interventionist or liberalising labour policy reforms, and does the economic context matter? Drawing on the previous literature on government ideology and public policy, we hypothesise that leftist governments are more likely to implement interventionist labour policies. However, we also expect that economic circumstances influence parties’ room to manoeuvre, and we thus hypothesise that the impact of government partisanship on labour policy reform will be weaker during troublesome economic circumstances. The main contribution of this paper is empirical, in that we take seriously the ‘dependent variable problem’ of policy studies that look to aggregate measures to detect instances of retrenchment, by making use of a new dataset on the directionality of 1,446 individual labour reform measures enacted across 13 nations between 1978 and 2017, allowing us to compare government labour policy during periods of varying levels of budgetary deficit, employment, and debt levels. Our results show that left-wing governments implement more interventionist labour policies, but only during less economically ‘challenging’ periods – during dire economic circumstances, economic orthodoxy seems to trump ideology in governmental policy-making processes.

Humanitarian capitalism: The labour regime of aid and the surrogate welfare state in times of global displacement

Recent literature on the geography and political economy of humanitarian migration governance has highlighted the diverse circuits of economic value being forged through ‘refugee crises’ across the world. However, there is a noticeable gap in the examination of what kind of labour relations sustain these new economic circuits. Additionally, there is limited analysis of how humanitarian labour practices intersect with existing geographies of labour precarity in regions where refugee aid operations are conducted. This article aims to address these gaps by exploring the dominant labour relations within the changing landscape of private and public service providers in Greece following the 2015–16 European ‘refugee crisis.’ The article argues that the growth of the refugee aid sector in Greece both capitalised on and exacerbated ongoing processes of labour market deregulation and public sector contraction. The burgeoning aid sector operated as a surrogate welfare state, relying on devalued local labour to address the basic social reproduction needs of global ‘surplus populations’. Extending discussions on the political economy of migration industries beyond profit-making to account for their role in transforming the welfare state and labour relations in spaces of accentuated capitalist crisis, the article demonstrates how the emergency temporalities of aid funding, the rise of public sector managerialism, and employment protection liberalisation impact migrant-facing services, effectively serving as both anti-labour and anti-immigration policy. Furthermore, it illustrates how politically induced migrant ruination is used as a lever to intensify and moralise humanitarian labour in a feedback loop detrimental to both working-class locals and migrants.

Workers’ self-organisation under military rule: challenges and opportunities in post-coup Myanmar

In February 2021, the Myanmar military seized power in a coup, bringing to an end a decade of quasi-civilian electoral rule, during which workers in Myanmar had organised themselves into close to 3000 workplace unions. The coup and post-coup imposition of martial law thus upended what had been a vigorous domestic labour movement. Yet post-coup restrictions on worker mobilising have not extinguished workers’ collective struggles. We therefore investigate, in this article, the challenges and opportunities for workers’ self-organisation under post-coup conditions. We argue that despite heightened restrictions since the coup, industrial workers have exploited contradictions in the post-coup factory labour regime to press demands and make tangible, if limited, gains. To substantiate our argument, we present two cases of worker organising at garment factories on Yangon’s industrial outskirts. Empirically, we draw on interviews we conducted with workers involved in the two cases in question, and on our ongoing research into Myanmar’s post-coup labour conditions more generally.

Analysing policy success and failure in Australia: Pink batts and set‐top boxes

AbstractThis article examines two Australian government programs from the Rudd/Gillard Labor government, the Home Insulation Program (HIP) and the Digital Switchover Household Assistance Scheme (HAS). Both became shibboleths of the Labor government's perceived waste and incompetence. Using key informant interviews and documents obtained under freedom of information (FOI), I analyse these programs against the multiple ‘dimensions’ of success proposed by Newman and common narrative frames around programme failure. I argue that the HAS was broadly successful across most dimensions of success, notwithstanding the adverse media attention. The study identifies four key factors driving HIP's failure: scheme design, installer training, demand control, and departmental expertise. All of these came back to the timeline pressures, driven by conflicting priorities, which in turn gave the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) more influence than would usually be the case. In comparison, HAS's success is attributed to crucial design choices, like the phased rollout and head contractor model. The article identifies the danger of ignoring subject matter expertise and poor policy/Cabinet processes, which have been reinforced by the recent Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.Points for practitioners Demand‐driven programmes need to have demand‐side control techniques built into them. The role of central agencies needs to be carefully considered, particularly in relation to areas that are not their expertise, such as detailed programme development and implementation. Lessons about poor policy and Cabinet processes, as well as cultural change from the Pink Batts Royal Commission, do not appear to have been sufficiently embedded in the culture of the APS, as there are ongoing echoes of the same problems evident in the Robodebt Royal Commission.

When authoritarian innovations fail: Labour governance in Myanmar's reform era and beyond

The concept of authoritarian innovations provides a means of interpreting labour governance practices that claim to uphold democratic values and international labour standards while restricting labour participation and genuine voice in the workplace. Two underexplored dimensions of this literature are (a) how authoritarian practices are utilised by power elites in ‘hybrid’ state formations and (b) under what conditions they may be discarded in favour of a return to direct forms of coercion and violence. In this article, we examine these questions with reference to Myanmar, where there was a decade of experimentation with democracy before a reversion to military-dominated authoritarian rule in February 2021. In the first half of that decade, space opened under a military-led government for decidedly more democratic labour relations, although labour governance reforms were designed and operationalised in ways that constrained the strength and reach of trade unions. In the second half, a democratically elected civilian-led government presided over the contraction of the space available to organised labour. By tracking the alignment of meso-level authoritarian practices against the changing macro-level character of Myanmar's political landscape, this article contributes to theoretical debates within the emerging literature on authoritarian innovations in labour governance.

Products of time: Matchboxes as scientific containers and the social lives of archaeological ephemera

Archaeological work leaves material histories, from archival notes to containers that used to store artifacts. Rarely, however, are these containers preserved or valued as technologies that codified and organized archaeological information. This paper analyzes a collection of matchboxes that were formerly used as artifact containers in a 1940s excavation in Coahuila, Mexico. The matchboxes, never formally accessioned and yet still saved by collections staff, are housed In the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) Museum Support Center. By tracing the labor regimes the matchboxes passed through, the specimens they once contained, and the hands that used them in a multitude of ways, this project uses the matchboxes’ microhistories to reveal how archaeological containers influenced archaeological science. This research argues for a treatment of the matchboxes as artifacts themselves, worthy of formal accession and of value for their role in the history of archaeological science.

From landslide to mudslide: The strategic marketing mistakes of the 2020–2023 New Zealand Labour Government

From landslide to mudslide: The strategic marketing mistakes of the 2020–2023 New Zealand Labour Government

Has ‘the great moving right show’ stopped?

How will the new Labour government compare to its New Labour predecessors? This article revisits ‘New Labour’s Double Shuffle’, the critique of the New Labour government that Stuart Hall wrote in 2003, to see how this might provide guidance in understanding the conjuncture of the Labour government elected in July 2024. Hall???s article had followed on from his pre-election analysis of the Thatcher project in ‘The Great Moving Right Show’, in 1978. His argument was that the dominant agenda of the New Labour governments was one of subordination to pressures emanating from capital, with the demands of Labour’s supporters being subordinated to this. It is proposed that the relations between the dominant and subordinate elements in these structures should be seen in dialectical terms, as an ongoing struggle between conflicting social forces. The question is raised of whether the current Labour government is essentially a continuation of the New Labour project, or whether it might be something different. The argument is made that to achieve a favourable outcome in a new struggle for hegemony it is essential that Labour remain in office for several parliamentary terms, and that there be a critical engagement with what its government does.

Prisoner Health and Well-Being in Historical Perspective, 1850–1900: Exploring Experiences of Illness and Disability in the Victorian Convict System

Using historical and archival methodological approaches, this article provides an interdisciplinary empirical study of health experiences of prisoners in the Victorian convict prison in England and Wales. It explores the challenges of doing historical criminological work on prisoner health and disability. The article examines the health of long-term prisoners, those serving sentences of penal servitude and their interactions and treatment by the Prison Medical Officers in the system. Reflecting society outside, the prison population was drawn from populations that had experienced childhood illness, workplace accidents and war and therefore had to accommodate those suffering from both short- and long-term health issues. Using historical documentation and case studies of individual prisoners, this article highlights not only the deep scepticism the system had for those they saw as ‘malingerers’, but also the recognition that some people could not endure the full force of the prison labour regime.