Between 2022-23 the UK saw a wave of strike action unprecedented since the 1980s and included action by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) - a union that has not taken action in England before. Existing studies of strikes generally distinguish between proximate and underlying causes, but agree that they are multi-causal social phenomena that are not reducible to a single factor. Strikes remain an important subject for study because they are often the 'tip of the iceberg', reflecting underlying tensions and grievances in the workplace, organisation and wider sector. Further, their occurrence may reflect the efficiency (or otherwise) of the machinery for the settlement of grievances at national or organisational level. While it is clear that pay and inflation were the immediate drivers for recent public and private sector industrial action, the narratives of those on strike in the public services pointed to a wider context reflecting the reduced capacity of public services and changes in work and the context of work that pre-dated, but were intensified by COVID-19. This research aims to investigate the 2022-23 public service strikes in three public services, health, education and rail, represented by four trade unions and focussing on teachers, nurses, paramedics, and rail workers. It will utilise first-hand participant accounts that explore the processes, dynamics, meanings and significance of strikes from the bottom-up, but located within their wider institutional, political, economic and social contexts. With a perceived crisis in many areas of the public services marked by chronic staff shortages, the research explores the significance of potential disruptions to professional identity and status related to the erosion of public service service delivery that may affect the relationship between staff and service users as well as organisational commitment. While in the past unions that highlight professional identity have been assumed to be less likely to organise industrial action, the complex dynamics between professionalism and industrial action deserves further attention against the backdrop of the recent resurgence of labour and strikes in UK public services. The research will look at the extent to which these issues were motivators for industrial action across occupations and sectors of the public services, in addition to pay and inflation. Women now comprise a majority of UK trade union members, largely a reflection of the enduring strength of public service trade unionism. This research additionally considers the diversity of participants in recent industrial action in terms of race, gender and age and how these different social identities were or were not reflected or articulated in industrial action. The research will take an intersectional lens to industrial conflict and will thus advance the theorisation of intersectionality within the context of work and employment. The research will have significant social and economic impact with improved understanding of the key issues for public service workers that underpin distal and proximal causes of strikes that may help to reduce future conflict and the negative economic and social impacts of industrial action, including on productivity. It will inform public sector pay setting and the work of pay review bodies by illuminating the wider factors that may need to be addressed beyond pay to allay industrial conflict. Findings will have implications for professional bodies such as the CIPD, refocusing human resources and practices on conflict resolution and informing HR practitioners and unions in their negotiations.

Workplace health and safety representative have legal rights to represent the interests and concerns of workers over health and safety, to make representations on potential hazards and dangers and to have contact with health and safety inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive or the local authority (HSE,2020). In a pandemic their independence from but relationship with management is potentially critical in assessing and addressing risk for workers and for public health. This research identifies the role that health and safety representatives have played during COVID-19, lessons learned and best practice for future waves or pandemics. It examines organisational and sectoral mechanisms and processes for worker voice and representation and effective social dialogue and joint regulation on health and safety. It explores the potentially key part health and safety representatives are playing in the return to work and productivity. They are not only essential to independent risk assessment and the provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), but also the organisation of work and workplace ergonomics, including the challenges of continued home working. They are central to the protection of mental health, ensuring that health and safety measures cover all groups of workers and to the confidence of workers in their organisation's capacity to keep them safe. Drawing upon case-studies in eight key sectors, the project, supported by the HSE and a range of trade unions, aims to explore the balance between productivity, public health and worker health and safety during pandemics, with a focus upon exemplary and future practice.