Whitfield, G.J. (2022) ‘You couldn’t have a heart and want to strike’: mobilising workers in England’s social care sector. Capital & Class, 46 (3). pp. 331-350. ISSN 0309-8168
Abstract
This article uses John Kelly’s mobilisation framework, with its foundational concept of injustice, to explore workers’ propensity towards unionism in England’s outsourced social care sector. Drawing on 60 interviews with union organisers and officers, care workers, support workers and care company managers, this research highlights the difficulties of union organising in the sector and explores theorisations of mobilising. The research contends that for mobilisation theory to provide insight into relationships between work and unionism, varieties of injustice and collectivism need to be contextualised. Paid care provision generates both employment-related injustices and care-related injustices, which lead to divergent collective identities and attitudes towards unions. An absence of a coherent entity for workers to attach blame to – within a context where private providers frequently remain reliant on state funding levels – affects whether injustice and collectivism progress to mobilisation and unionisation.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | care work; employment relations; Marxism; mobilisation theory; unions |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 16 Sep 2022 11:37 |
Last Modified: | 16 Sep 2022 11:37 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/03098168211054803 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:190660 |