New Labour/Hard Labour? ― Restructuring And Resistance Inside the Welfare Industry

This collection, edited by Mooney (social policy, The Open U., UK) and Law (sociology, U. of Abertay Dundee, UK), examines the impact of New Labour's "welfare reform" and public sector "modernization" on the nature of work within the caring industries of Britain and on worker resistance to restructuring through the presentation of comparative case studies. Following a pair of chapters providing an analytical understanding of the restructuring of the welfare labor process and the general industrial relations context of UK public sector work, ten chapters discuss support workers' experience in private finance initiative hospital schemes, control and resistance in nursing wards, the impact of the market on teacher professionalism, academic labor and the commodification of higher education, modernization and resistance in the Department for Work and Pensions, and professionalization and degradation in the case of nursery nurses. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)