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Along with colleagues David Guest from King’s College London and Angie Knox from Sydney University, IER’s Chris Warhurst has published a journal virtual special issue that re-evaluates classic articles on the quality of working life published in Human Relations over the past 50 years. Read more about the articles and the introduction to the special issue here.

Working class women have borne the brunt of the cuts to working hours as employers struggle to ride out the pandemic, according to new findings published today by social inequality researchers from the University of Nottingham and 91¸£Àû's Institute for Employment Research. Working class women were the worst affected by spring’s UK-wide lockdown, with 40% reporting psychological distress in April.

Today’s briefing paper – 'Carrying the work burden of the COVID-19 pandemic: working class women in the UK: Employment and Mental Health' [link] focuses on patterns of employment and mental health in the first three months of lockdown, as revealed by data from the monthly Understanding Society COVID-19 UK survey, and explores to what extent the experience of working class women differs from middle class women and from men.

Professor Clare Lyonette from IER said: "Many working class areas in the north are included in the higher tier groups of the government's new 3-tier system of local restrictions in England. The effects of any future lockdowns, either local or national, could be far-reaching and extremely damaging for working class women who provide vital work, both paid and unpaid'.

Sudipa Sarkar has a new ESRC-funded Impact Accelerator Award to work on NGO held data. She will be working with the NGO, Child Rights and You (CRY) to build a collaboration that will focus on the issue of child labour in India through better usage and analysis of NGO held data.

A workshop is scheduled on 6th February 2019 at IER discussing the issue where both academic and non-academic researchers will be present.

On 23 May BBC Radio 4’s broadcast a programme featuring IER Director Chris Warhurst talking about employment discrimination based on worker appearance – ‘lookism’. The talk centred on whether lookism is a legitimate business practice or should be banned as a form of illegitimate discrimination. The talk was recorded with a live audience at Coventry’s Fargo Village.

The programme, part of the Four Thought series, is available on

A series of research-based policy briefings, organized by the 91¸£Àû and its Connecting Research on Employment and Work (CREW) network, will take place over four consecutive weeks in November and early December 2017 in London.

Experts from the 91¸£Àû Institute for Employment Research, 91¸£Àû Law School and 91¸£Àû Business School's Industrial Relations Research Unit evaluate the employment policy, rights, skills and labour market implications of the UK's withdrawal from the EU and make research-based recommendations for future development of policy in these areas, as the UK leaves the EU.

Next dates for the briefing, which will be held at Central Hall, Maurice Barnett room, Westminster, London, SW1H 9NH from 12:30-1:30, with lunch available from 12:00:

• 14 November - Migration and Skills: Guglielmo Meardi, Anne Green & Erika Kispeter
• 23 November - Job Loss and Job Creation – Pitfalls and Opportunities?: Nigel Driffield
• 27 November - Training Funds for the Unemployed: Chris Warhurst, Daria Luchinskaya & Peter Dickinson
• 7 December - Employment Rights: Ania Zbyszewska & Alan Neal

If you would like to RSVP to any of the events, please contact Lynne Marston: L.Marston@warwick.ac.uk.