Worker-Led Dissent in the Age of Austerity: Comparing the Conditions of Success

David J Bailey

Work, Employment & Society, 2024, vol. 38, issue 4, 1041-1061

Abstract: The decline of the power of organised labour, which is a central feature of neoliberalism, was compounded during the ‘age of austerity’. Yet, the potentially disruptive agency of workers remains. This article presents a qualitative process-tracing exercise for over 150 prominent episodes of worker-led dissent in the period 2010–2019 in the UK, the results of which are also made available in a website accompanying the article: ‘ Contesting the UK’s neoliberal model of capitalism: worker-led dissent (2010–2019) . The article identifies seven configurations of causal conditions that proved sufficient for workers to successfully pursue their stated aims during this period. While ‘standard’ national disputes led by mainstream trade unions were on the whole not sufficient to achieve success during this period, nevertheless a number of alternative combinations of conditions did prove to be sufficient, especially locally-focused campaigns, those undertaken by grassroots ‘indie’ unions and those in the transport sector.

Keywords: labour; neoliberalism; resistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170231169675 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:38:y:2024:i:4:p:1041-1061

DOI: 10.1177/09500170231169675

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().