Sharlene Farrugia, of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre, talks on trade unions and welfare reform. She has extensive experience working in local government and the non-profit sector both in the UK and Australia, working in areas of access, social inclusion and gender equity.

Analyses of trade unions, power, and gender inequality have traditionally focused internally upon women’s representation within trade union organisational structures, or how mainstreamed ‘women’s issues’ are on trade union agendas. Less focus has been given to how trade unions utilise their power resources to more effectively represent women occupying [precarious] positions within the labour market – itself potentially a reflection of unequal gendered power relations within the trade union movement.

By analysing data taken from five trade unions, she examines trade union ‘power’ when engaging with a significant welfare policy reform – Universal Credit.

She positions women as economically, socially and politically situated through welfare reform, and contributes to the study of power resource theory by giving focus to trade union power(s) in relation to labour. The conceptualisation of ‘countervailing power’, within the context of Universal Credit, demonstrates how broadening the strategic choices of trade unions has potential to transform their role within the regulation of women’s labour, while challenging the gendered character of employment relations maintained through welfare systems.