Crossing the Divide? the Union Role in Re-Regulating Self-Employed Gig Work in an English Warehouse

This paper talks to the RC44 call for papers with respect to What Labour Movement for the 21st Century? Specifically on the question of union engagement with self-employed workers and the connection with struggles of workplace-based workers. Drawing from a wider study of multi-actor responses to changing labour market dynamics and labour shortages in the UK the paper examines union efforts to re-regulate delivery work undertaken by self-employed logistics sector workers. The paper traces the union’s experience of moving into terrain usually considered hostile for union organising (Mrozowicki and Pilch, 2021; Gautié et al., 2021). In this example, set in the context of the UK’s voluntary employment relations system, a fragile form of union-management agreement has emerged. The paper considers the conditions that led to the agreement, how self-employed workers have experienced this engagement and the motives and outcomes for the union in engaging in this re-regulation of gig work, both in terms of its impact on the self-employed and waged warehouse workers. Qualitative data from in-depth workplace interviews are complemented by data from an original survey of UK warehousing employers and stakeholder interviews. The paper develops an argument about union role in the stabilising warehousing work and examines the tensions this creates for union organisation in the 21st Century.