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Creating a multilayered representational ‘package’ for subcontracted workers: the case of cleaners at Ben‐Gurion University
Author(s) -
Preminger Jonathan
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
industrial relations journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.525
H-Index - 3
eISSN - 1468-2338
pISSN - 0019-8692
DOI - 10.1111/irj.12201
Subject(s) - complementarity (molecular biology) , opposition (politics) , representation (politics) , de facto , power (physics) , industrial relations , sociology , management , political science , law and economics , public relations , economics , law , genetics , physics , quantum mechanics , politics , biology
Research into the organising of subcontracted workers tends to focus on how such campaigns contribute to union revitalisation, the shortcomings of non‐union organisations in comparison with classic unionism and opposition rather than complementarity between strategies. Analysing the organising of subcontracted cleaners at a university, this article shifts this focus, evaluating the campaign in terms of how it assisted the workers, regardless of whether it contributed to union renewal, and in terms of complementarity between new and traditional industrial relations actors. Drawing on the power resources approach, it asserts that collaboration across different ‘paths to representation’ can create a multilayered representational ‘package’ in which different organisations with different power resources take on different aspects of what was once a (single) union's role, covering each other's shortcomings in a kind of de facto representational ‘division of labour’.