Making class politics possible: Organizing contract cleaners in London

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 305-323

  Wills, Jane ^a  

^a QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Anti essentialist class politics; Aontract cleaning; Broad based organizing; Intersectionality; Living wages; Sub contracting; Trade union organization

Indexed keywords

EMPLOYMENT; LABOR MARKET; LABOR STANDARD; TRADE UNION; URBAN POLITICS; WORKPLACE;

ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; LONDON [ENGLAND]; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 45249092594     PISSN: 03091317     EISSN: 14682427     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00783.x     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. Allen, J. and N. Henry (1997) Ulrich Beck's risk society at work: Labour and employment in the contract services industry. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22, 180-96.
2. Aguiar, L.M. (2006) Janitors and sweatshop citizenship in Canada. Antipode 38.3, 440-61.
3. Anderson, J., P. Hamilton and J. Wills (forthcoming) The multi-scalarity of trade union practice. In S. McGrath-Champ, A. Herod and A. Rainnie (eds.), The handbook of employment and society: Working space, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
4. Bauman, Z. (2001) Community: Seeking safety in an insecure world. Polity, Cambridge.
5. Bezuidenhout, A. and K. Fakier (2006) Maria's burden: Contract cleaning and the crisis of social reproduction in post-apartheid South Africa. Antipode 38.3, 462-85.
6. Bottero, W. (2004) Class identities and the identity of class. Sociology 38, 985-1003.
7. Byrne, D. (2005) Class culture and identity: A reflection on absences against presences. Sociology 39, 807-16.
8. Calhoun, C. (1982) The question of class struggle: Social foundations of popular radicalism during the industrial revolution. Blackwell, Oxford.
9. Calhoun, C. (1983) The radicalism of tradition: Community strength or venerable disguise and borrowed language. American Journal of Sociology 88, 886-914.
10. Castree, N. 1999: Gnvisioning capitalism: geography and the renewal of Marxian political-economy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geography 24, 137-58.
11. Charlesworth, A., D. Gilbert, A. Randall, H. Southall and C. Wrigley (1996) An atlas of industrial protest in Britain, 175-1990. Macmillan, London.
12. Croucher, R. (1982) Engineers at war 1939-1945. Merlin, London.
13. Davis, F., J. Stankevicivte, D. Ebbutt and K. Kaggwa (2007) The grounds of justice. von Hugel Institute, Cambridge.
14. Evans, S. and H. Boyte (1986) Free spaces: The sources of democratic change in America. Harper and Row, New York.
15. Evans, Y., K. Datta, J. Herbert, J. May C. McIlwaine and J. Wills (2005) Making the city work: Low paid employment in London [WWW document]. Global cities at work: Working paper 1. URL http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/ globalcities/reports/index.html (accessed on 14 February 2008).
16. Family Budget Unit (2001) Low cost but acceptable: A minimum income standard for households with children in London's East End. Family Budget Unit, London. Available from UNISON.
17. Fine, J. (2005) Community unionism and the revival of the American labor movement. Politics and Society 33, 153-99.
18. Fine, J. (2006) Worker centers. ILR and Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
19. Freeman, R. (2007) Fighting for other folks' wages: The logic and illogic of living wage campaigns. Industrial Relations 44, 14-31.
20. Gall, G. (ed.) (2003) Union organizing. Routledge, London.
21. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1997) Re-placing class in economic geographies: possibilities for a new class politics. In R. Lee and J. Wills (eds.), Geographies of economies, Arnold, London.
22. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006) A postcapitalist politics. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
23. Gibson-Graham, J.K., S.A. Resnik and R.D. Wolf (eds.) (2000) Class and its others. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
24. Gibson-Graham, J.K., S.A. Resnik and R.D. Wolf (eds.) (2001) Re/ presenting class: Essays in postmodern Marxism. Duke University Press, Durham.
25. GLA (2005) A fairer London. The living wage in London. GLA, London.
26. GLA (2006) A fairer London. The living wage in London. GLA, London.
27. GLA (2007) A fairer London. The living wage in London. GLA, London.
28. Goos, M. and A. Manning (2003) McJobs and MacJobs: The growing polarisation of jobs in the UK. In R. Dickens, P. Gregg and J. Wadsworth (eds.), The labour market under new labour, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke/New York.
29. Gray, M. (2004) The social construction of the service sector: institutional structures and labour market outcomes. Geoforum 35, 23-34.
30. Hale, A. and J. Wills (2005) (eds.) Threads of labour: Garment industry supply chains from the workers' perspective. Blackwell, Oxford.
31. Harvey, D. (1996) Justice, nature and the politics of difference. Blackwell, Oxford.
32. Heery, E. (1998) The relaunch of the TUC. British Journal of Industrial Relations 36, 339-60.
33. Herod, A. and L.M. Aguiar (2006) Introduction: Cleaners and the dirty work of neo-liberalism. Antipode 38.3, 425-34.
34. Hobsbawm, E. (1988) Working class internationalism. In F. van Holthoon and M. Van der Linden (eds.), Internationalism in the labour movement 1830-1940, Leiden, New York.
35. Hobsbawm, E. (1996) Identity politics and the left. New Left Review 17, 38-47.
36. Jamoul, L. (2006) The art of politics: Broad-based organising in Britain. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of London.
37. Kaplanis, I. (2007) The geography of employment polarisation in Britain [WWW document]. Institute for Public Policy Research. URL http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/ (accessed on 15 February 2008).
38. Katz, C. (2006) Messing with 'the project'. In N. Castree and D. Gregory (eds.), David Harvey: A critical reader, Blackwell, Oxford.
39. Kelly, J. (1998) Rethinking industrial relations: Mobilization, collectivism and long waves. Routledge, London.
40. Klandermaans, B. (2001) Does class still unite? Concluding remarks. In G. van Guyes, H. de Witte and P. Pasture (eds.), Can class still unite: the differentiated workforce, class solidarity and trade unions, Ashgate, Aldershot.
41. Laclau, E. (1994) The making of political identities. Verso, London.
42. Laclau, E. (1996) Emancipation(s). Verso, London.
43. Lamont, M. (2000) The dignity of working men: Morality and the boundaries of race, class and immigration. Harvard University Press and Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
44. Luce, S. (2004) Fighting for a living wage. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
45. Mann, M. (1973) Consciousness and action among the Western working class. Macmillan, London.
46. May, J., J. Wills, K. Datta, Y. Evans, J. Herbert, J. May and C. McIlwaine (2007) Keeping London working: Global cities, the British state, and London's new migrant division of labour. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32, 151-67.
47. McDowell, L. (2003) Redundant masculinities: Employment change and white working class youth. Blackwell, Oxford.
48. Milkman, R. (ed.) (2000) Organising immigrants. University of California Press, Berkeley.
49. Pastor, M. (2001) Common ground and ground zero: The new economy and the new organising in Los Angeles. Antipode 33, 259-88.
50. Pattie, C., P. Seyd and P. Whiteley (2004) Citizenship in Britain: values, participation and democracy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
51. Pinch, P.L. and A. Patterson (2000) Public sector restructuring and regional development. Regional Studies 34, 265-75.
52. Pulido, L. (2007) A day without immigrants: The racial and class politics of immigrant exclusion. Antipode 39.1, 1-7.
53. Rachleff, P.J. (2006) Neoliberalism: Context for a new workers' struggle. WorkingUSA 9.4, 457-465.
54. Reimer, S. (1998) Working in a risk society. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23, 116-27.
55. Rowbothom, S. (2006) Cleaners' organising in Britain from the 1970s: A personal account. Antipode 38.3, 608-25.
56. Ryan, S. and A. Herod (2006) Restructuring the architecture of state regulation in the Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand cleaning industries and the growth of precarious employment. Antipode 38.3, 486-507.
57. Samuel, R. (1986) Introduction. In R. Samuel, B. Bloomfield and G. Bonas (eds.), The enemy within: Pit villages and the miners strike of 1984-5, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
58. Sassen, S. (2001) The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. Second edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
59. Savage, L. (1998) Geographies of organizing: Justice for janitors in Los Angeles. In A. Herod (ed.), Organising the landscape: Geographical perspectives on labor unionism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
60. Savage, M. (2000) Class analysis and social transformation. Open University Press, Buckingham.
61. Savage, M. (2001) Class identity in contemporary Britain: The demise of collectivism? In G. van Guyes, H. de Witte and P. Pasture (eds.), Can class still unite? The differentiated workforce, class solidarity and trade unions, Ashgate, Aldershot.
62. Savage, M. (2005) Working class identities in the 1960s: Revisiting the affluent worker study. Sociology: 39, 929-46.
63. Savage, M., G. Bagnall and B. Longhurst (2001) Ordinary, ambivalent and defensive: Class identities in the North-West of England. Sociology 35, 875-92.
64. Schoenberger, E. (2000) The living wage in Baltimore: Impacts and reflections. Review of Radical Political Economics 32, 428-36.
65. Sennett, R. (1998) The corrosion of character: Personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. Norton and Company, New York.
66. Shorter, E. and C. Tilly (1974) Strikes in France 1830-1968. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
67. Smith, N. (2000) What happened to class? Environment and Planning A 32, 1011-32.
68. Southall, H. (1988) Towards a geography of unionisation: The spatial organisation and distribution of early British trade unions. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13, 466-83.
69. Sunley, P. (1990) Striking parallels: A comparison of the 1926 and 1984-5 coal-mining disputes. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 8, 35-52.
70. Waldinger, R., C. Erickson, R. Milkman, D.J.B. Mitchell, A. Valenzuela, K. Wong and M. Zeitlin (1998) Helots no more: A case study of the Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles. In K. Bronfenbrenner, S. Friedman, R. Hurd, R.A. Oswald and R.L. Seeber (eds.), Organizing to win: New research on union strategies, ILR Press, Ithaca.
71. Waldinger, R. and M.I. Lichter (2003) How the other half works: immigration and the social organization of labor. University of California Press, Berkeley.
72. Walsh, J. (2000) Organizing the scale of labour regulation in the United States: Service-sector activism in the city. Environment and Planning A 32, 1593-610.
73. Wills, J. (1996) Geographies of trade unionism: Translating traditions over time and space. Antipode 28, 352-78.
74. Wills, J. (2001) Mapping low pay. TELCO, London.
75. Wills, J. (2004) Campaigning for low paid workers: The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO) Living Wage Campaign. In W. Brown, G. Healy, E. Heery and P. Taylor (eds.), The future of worker representation, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
76. Wills, J. (forthcoming) Subcontracted employment and its challenge to labour. Labor Studies Journal.
77. Wills, J. and M. Simms (2004) Building reciprocal community unionism in the UK. Capital and Class 82, 59-84.
78. Woodley, T. (2007) Justice for cleaners [WWW document]. URL http://www.tgwu.org.uk/Templates/Campaign (accessed on 21 February 2007).
79. Wright, M. (2006) Differences that matter. In N. Castree and D. Gregory (eds.), David Harvey: A critical reader, Blackwell, Oxford.
80. Young, I.M. (1998) Harvey's complaint with race and gender struggles: A critical response. Antipode 30, 36-42.