Date: Friday December 13

Time: 14:00-16:00

Tencent Meeting: 972-527-7232

Speaker: Dr. Liam Foster, Professor, University of Sheffield

This event is jointly hosted by the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University and the CSCC Care and Gender Cluster, Duke Kunshan University.

Abstract

Despite its growth and ubiquity, paid adult social care work persists as a site of very low pay, insecurity, and exploitation, where ‘decent work’ remains elusive. Social care provision’s quasi-marketmodel, where local authorities assess and commission predominantly independent sector providers to deliver care, relies on outsourcing and contributes to workforce fragmentation. This atomisation, with thousands of providers and many workers employed to support people in their own homes, contrasts with the terrain of more established trade unionism and impedes organising. In fact, a mere 15% of private sector-employed adult social care workers are unionised (Cominetti, 2023: 5), in contrast with 21% of all employees in England (Department for Business and Trade, 2023: 21). Although care workers lack a unified voice or influence through sectoral collective bargaining, they, and organisations representing them, undertake significant organising and activist work towards improving their situation. In the English context, however, this phenomenon has received only limited attention in academic research. This paper draws on work conducted as part of the ESRC-funded Centre for Care, led by the University of Sheffield. The findings are based on a series of qualitative case studies of organisations engaged in care worker organising, consisting of interviews with key actors and care workers. These case studies explore the focus, barriers, and successes in approaches to care worker organising, and include both newer as well as more established trade unions, and campaign groups. Based on the issues and campaigns at the centre of these organisations’ activities, key areas where care workers and those representing their interests call for positive change are identified. These include various aspects of labour market policy, including pay and conditions, alongside policies and theoretical considerations that shape the wider social care system. It concludes by reflecting on what the issues identified in care worker organising reveal about the relative status of care work and the circumstances of care workers, and the prospects for change. In addition, Dr. Foster will provide some information about the work of the Centre for Care, and the work it is conducting. Furthermore, Dr. Foster will mention the role of care in some further work Dr. Foster is undertaking about gender and pension planning in the UK.

Bio

Liam Foster is a Professor in Social Policy, Co-Director of CIRCLE (Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities) and Director of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. He specializes in theories of ageing, pensions, extending working lives, care and social inequalities. Professor Foster has developed a national and international research profile in these areas. He has commented on his research in the media, advised unions (TUC), been involved in projects with business (AXA and Prudential) and charities (The Fawcett Society), and been referenced by political parties (Labour’s Older Women’s Commission). He has presented his research at a variety of national and international conferences and has been an invited speaker at the Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Education, the European Parliament in Brussels, the House of Lords, and the UN in New York as a world leading expert on ageing. Professor Foster is former member of the UK Social Policy Association Executive Committee. He was also the former managing editor of Social Policy and Society. Liam’s current projects include a large-scale project four country study funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health and Working Life, focused on exclusion and inequality in late working life and an ESRC Funded Centre for Care project on organising in the care sector. Professor Foster also has a longstanding interest in teaching and research methods and has published widely in this area. He was awarded the Social Policy Association Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Award in 2021. In total, Professor Foster has authored over 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters and has authored or edited six books.