Out with the old, in with the new? Institutional experimentation and decent work in the UK

Abstract

Drawing on an extended critical case study of the Greater Manchester (GM) city region in the UK, this article contributes to debates around the changing role of social actors within local labour markets, and how they contribute to processes of regulatory experimentation and innovation. While recent literature has drawn attention to new actors and novel strategies in responding to labour market disruptions, in this article the authors argue that there is still room for embedded actors and established practices in defending, and advancing, decent minimum standards. This may be through political lobbying, workplace organising, industrial action, extending collectively agreed standards to outsourced workers, or through hybrid forms of trade union–community campaigning. Against a wider background of labour market de-regulation, the authors’ case study points to the layering up of increasingly fluid and context-specific repertoires of conflict and cooperation that shape labour market ‘norms’ and legitimise particular progressive causes within local rather than national capitalisms.