First published in 1998, this volume asks: are groups or organisations beyond the sphere of Westminster politics doomed to be marginalised in mainstream news coverage, or can the currently fashionable emphasis upon media techniques and 'spin doctoring' offer such non-official news sources a means of securing media success?. This question is now surfacing as a major issue within politics and cultural debates, as well as within the sociology of the mass media and communication studies. We are living through a period of remarkable transformation in politics, culture and social arrangements. Communications experts in the 'new Labour' camp believe that trade unions must respond by becoming more sophisticated in their use of the media and marketing techniques; and by employing new vocabularies for communicating their messages to the public. However, can trade unions succeed in using the tricks of the 1990s spin doctor to restore their position?. This study uses extensive interviews with leading national newspaper journalists and senior figures within trade unions to explore the question. Drawing upon unique archive material the study points to the importance of government in fostering or undermining branches of journalism including coverage of labour relations.

This study focuses on working-class women, catering and cleaning workers, and the way their interests were presented in trade unions. It argues that there is an institutional bias within trade unions which precludes the full representation of women's interests. Based on empirical research into two trade unions in the National Health Service, the book stresses the importance of how women's work is structured, in order to investigate the role of trade unions in challenging or reproducing inequalities.

Threads of Labour presents new empirical research by a network of garment workers' support organizations and makes sense of global supply chains from the bottom up. Presents new empirical research by a network of garment workers' support organizations in ten different locations in Asia, Europe and Mexico. Creates a blueprint for conducting worker-orientated action research in order to better understand and resist the negative impact of globalization on labour. Ensures that workers' voices reach those who are already trying to reconfigure global capitalism in more humane directions. Explores the ways in which workers might begin to develop new forms of organization that are more suited to securing gains in the global garment industry. Bridges the gap between activist and academic research, improving the conversation between these two groups.

This book illuminates the process and substance of transnational regulation of labour in a global economy. Transnational labour regulation, a central feature of the European social model, engages the 27 Member States of the European Union, and is of potential importance to the rest of the world. The book analyses the attempts at transnational regulation of temporary agency work through the social dialogue between trade unions and employers' organisations at European level and the subsequent - and so far fruitless - EU legislative process. These two processes of transnational labour regulation, and their interaction, until now have been largely invisible. The book also highlights distinctive features of Member States' national regulation as they interacted with the debates on EU transnational labour regulation. It further explores the overlap between regulation of temporary agency work and the EU's regulation of transnational trade in services, the subject of the Directive on services in the internal market. Finally, it draws lessons from the experience of regulation of temporary agency work at national and European levels for transnational labour regulation in general.

Against the background of the global economic crisis since 2007/2008 and increasing inequality across the world, the Global South has experienced widespread, large-scale industrial action, including in countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa, which had been hailed as the new growth engines of the global political economy as part of the so-called BRICS. This volume systematically evaluates how the new forms of labour mobilization witnessed in the past ten years responded to the predominance of the informality-precarity complex of industrial relations and what conclusions can be drawn for potentially successful strategies against exploitation in the future. Can we identify a convergence of new approaches across the Global South, or do we witness an ongoing fragmentation of actors, models and strategies? In addressing this question, consideration is given to issues of class as well as gender and race. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Globalizations.