ILPC 2027

The purpose of this paper is to look at the practices of resistance of workers in Great Britain, who are not in paid employment. This paper thereby contributes to the literature concerning the structural change of global capitalism and workers resistance by analysing work related activism outside of traditional trade unions. When looking at resistance against work there is a tendency in the literature to focus on industrial actions, i.e. on the workers' power to withdraw their labour – to strike. In contrast, I show by exploring the agency of the groups resisting unpaid work that their practices are much more diverse and that they need to be so, as as in most cases a strike is not possible. As such, the exploration of these practices of resistance might also be useful for the broader discussion on the changing nature of work under neoliberalism and what it means for industrial relations. This paper thus refers directly to the ILPC 2017 topics “Industrial relations, representation and trade union strategies” and “Labour agency and changing forms of resistance”.

Theoretically this paper is informed by Harry Cleaver's concept of the “social factory”, which is where the working class works, namely society as a whole. Consequently, work takes place in productive and reproductive spaces and it includes unwaged work. Furthermore, I build on Cleaver's conceptualisation of work as a social relation, which is not only key but also unique to capitalism and his subsequent understanding of class struggle as limited to the resistance against work (hence capitalism). The term resistance thus refers to reactionary practices but it cannot capture the proactive creation of alternative social relations of production. Yet post-capitalist imaginaries and practices - which are happening now and not in the distant future – are equally important for challenging the neoliberal hegemony and for progressive social change. As such, I extend the analysis to go beyond resistance by building on Silvia Federici's concept of commoning, practices for alternative modes of production and ways of being, which are intrinsically interlinked with resistances against capitalism. Practices of commoning therefore are “not the end point of anti-capitalist-struggle, but it's means” (Federici and Caffentzis 2013).

The paper is based on a Participatory Action Research methodology with 18 activists groups which put forward a critique of work, such as claimants' unions and unemployed workers' groups, campaigns against workfare and unpaid internships, disability groups and Unite Community. I predominately gained information through semi-structured individual and group interviews, material the groups produced themselves and participatory observation of protests and meetings in a period between 2011-2016.