Work and Employment

Almost every aspect of society will change after the pandemic, but if we learn lessons then life can be better. Featuring expert authors from across academia and civil society, this book offers ideas that might put us on alternative paths for positive social change.

This illuminating study of working life uses decades of large-scale survey to review notions of good work and job satisfaction in the UK. Exploring data on hundreds of occupations, it charts disparities in fulfilment potential across professions, and sets out fresh ideas for improving satisfaction at work nationally.

The impacts of austerity and welfare reform on work and employment relations are explored in this perceptive assessment. This book highlights the role of trade unions and social movements in challenging the insecurities and inequalities imposed by work-focused welfare policies such as Universal Credit and proposes progressive new paths for welfare.

This exploration of mental health and wellbeing in the UK and Republic of Ireland’s legal sector is a timely addition to international debates on the topic. It uses qualitative research to explore how cultural or structural factors impact practitioners, the legal profession, and wider society, suggesting interventions to improve wellbeing.

Drawing on a range of perspectives, this international collection goes beyond a sole focus on public sector work to uniquely cover the impact of austerity on work across the private, public and voluntary spheres.

Drawing on empirical research, this book provides an innovative exploration of youth and work, showing how youth identities are connected with the dynamics of labour and value in contemporary capitalism.

Can your job change your personality? This book provides an overview on how personality can be changed at work by societal, organisational and job-related factors, while considering how individuals can take an active approach in changing their personality at work.

In this pioneering work, expert scholars offer new thinking on proactivity by examining how emotion can drive employees’ proactivity in the workplace and how, in turn, that proactivity can shape one’s emotional experiences.

Addressing the rapidly shifting politics of the minimum wage in six English-speaking countries, Shaun Wilson analyses minimum wage policies within a political-economy narrative. Topical and poignant, this book identifies the success of living wage campaigns as central to both welfare state change and alternatives to the Basic Income.

This volume challenges the idea of wage employment as the global norm, comparing lived experiences of ‘ordinary work’ across conceptual and geographical boundaries and opening up new possibilities for how work, income, identity and care might be woven together differently.

This book provides a culturally nuanced analysis of key issues relating to youth unemployment. Examining the causes and consequences of youth unemployment, it assesses ways forward to promote economic self-sufficiency.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Drawing from the EU-funded DomEQUAL research project across 9 countries in Europe, South America and Asia, this comparative study explores the conditions of domestic workers around the world and the campaigns they are conducting to improve their labour rights.