Infertile Soils: Trade Unionism in Britain’s Agricultural Environment, and the Ruralisation of its New Economy: 1970-2013.

From the 1970s onwards, Britain’s weakened trade unions have attempted a rejuvenation of their orientations and strategies: chiefly in order to appeal to and represent precarity-prone workers in a more satisfactory manner than they had before. However, this rejuvenation process has occurred in a piecemeal and uncoordinated manner: orientations have only shifted partially, and certain rejuvenatory strategies have been far from effective. An interwoven process has occurred alongside, and helped necessitate, this attempted rejuvenation: Britain’s urban labour markets have become increasingly ‘ruralised’. That is to say, the British economy has been fundamentally restructured, and urban industrial relations in the ‘New Economy’ have come to increasingly resemble those long found in British agriculture. Britain’s Farmworkers’ Union has had to contend with ‘new economic’ institutional conditions – namely the norms of small-employee firms and interpersonal and/or triangular relations...Show moreFrom the 1970s onwards, Britain’s weakened trade unions have attempted a rejuvenation of their orientations and strategies: chiefly in order to appeal to and represent precarity-prone workers in a more satisfactory manner than they had before. However, this rejuvenation process has occurred in a piecemeal and uncoordinated manner: orientations have only shifted partially, and certain rejuvenatory strategies have been far from effective. An interwoven process has occurred alongside, and helped necessitate, this attempted rejuvenation: Britain’s urban labour markets have become increasingly ‘ruralised’. That is to say, the British economy has been fundamentally restructured, and urban industrial relations in the ‘New Economy’ have come to increasingly resemble those long found in British agriculture. Britain’s Farmworkers’ Union has had to contend with ‘new economic’ institutional conditions – namely the norms of small-employee firms and interpersonal and/or triangular relations between employers and workers – for an extended period of time. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, from 1970 onwards, the Farmworker’s Union would have utilised those orientations and strategies adopted by Britain’s urban unions during their rejuvenation processes, but in a more systematic, coherent and effective manner, and from an earlier date. To interrogate this assumption I pose the following research question: in terms of form and effectiveness, how differentiated have the orientations and strategies of the Farmworkers’ Union been, with regards to precarity-prone workers, when compared to the wider Trade Union Movement, and why?Show less

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Infertile Soils: Trade Unionism in Britain’s Agricultural Environment, and the Ruralisation of its New Economy: 1970-2013.