Spotlight On…Jill Rubery

Professor Jill Rubery, Director of the Work and Equalities Institute

What do you think the Work and Equalities Institute’s greatest achievement has been since its start at the beginning of this academic year? 

I think what I have found to be the most positive experience has been to see the enthusiasm and interest that the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI) has generated. The name itself resonates with the concerns and interests of staff, students and a wider public. We have had many messages commending Manchester’s initiative in setting up such an institute at this time and we now have an active doctoral student network of 20 plus, an academic staff membership of over 40 and well over a hundred signed up for the official launch, despite the uncertainties over this event due to the strike action. 

And just over the short time period  that we have been operating institute members have been actively contributing to the key debates of our time, whether this be through reports for the European Parliament on sexual harassment and on regulating precarious work, blogs and articles on the problems of the platform economy, new work for the International Labour Organisation on how to close the gender pay gap, new books on trade unions and migrants across Europe or on how to make work more equal, new evidence on stress and health and safety at work and a new article on risks to gender equality from Brexit. 

Fair treatment at work is one of the Institute’s research themes. What does the Institute hope to contribute to local, regional and national policy around this theme, which is clearly an important topic at the moment? 

The institute is actively involved in developing research that has policy implications at each of these different levels. 

Locally we are contributing to current policy debates in Greater Manchester around employment charters and other measures through a project on Just Work in Greater Manchester. The aim is to understand how economic and labour market restructuring is shaping the type and quality of work available and how employers, unions and regulatory institutions can help shape decent working conditions. 

At a national level members are involved on a number of fronts, across government organisations, employer organisations, trade unions, NGOs and charities. Recent examples include institute members taking a lead in developing a new British Standards Institute standard on diversity and inclusion and a new project with the Health and Safety Executive on the implications of an ageing workforce in transport.  

The Institute’s involvement with international policy making organisations is particularly strong and longstanding. The WEI participates in the steering committee of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Regulating for Decent Work biennial conference and Institute members have been working with the ILO on issues such as minimum wages, closing the gender pay gap and global value chains. Equally long standing is the involvement of Institute members in European policy discussions through a range of European institutions, whether on gender equality issues with the European Commission, precarious work and sexual harassment with the European Parliament or on the austerity impact on collective bargaining and employment regulation with the European Trade Union Institute.  

What are your long term plans for the Institute and what would you like to achieve? 

Our ambition is to be the world leading interdisciplinary hub for research on work and equalities.

The approach we take is decidedly interdisciplinary as no one discipline owns the world of work or can understand the complexities of the work and equalities interface. So one of our ambitions is to contribute, through our interdisciplinary perspective, to new thinking on work and equalities in ways that have relevance not only for the academic community but also for policymakers and practitioners. Our approach is also outward looking and comparative in perspective and our intention is to build on and develop research rooted in local, national and international policy debates and issues. 

What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever been given, and how did it help you? 

Perhaps the best advice I received - from a range of sources - was that I would thrive outside rather than inside the increasingly narrow discipline of economics and, linked to that, that there was life beyond Cambridge. This was not a north-south issue as I hailed from the real north – Newcastle – but studying and researching economics at Cambridge under the traditions of Keynes and political economy had been a real privilege. But the world was moving on and Manchester has provided me with the supportive environment that has enabled me to pursue my research interests and help establish a really strong cohort of researchers in the area of work and equalities.