Trade union strategies to tackle labour market insecurity: Geography and the role of Sheffield TUC

This paper analyses the role of trades councils and trade unions in organising within local and regional contexts
around the challenges facing and potential union strategies for addressing the needs of insecure and precarious
workers. We deploy a case study on the Sheffield Trade Union Council and the Sheffield Needs A Pay
Rise campaign as a way of exploring innovations and challenges for the trade union movement for organising
the unorganised. We explore the potentials as well as limitations of local organising and campaigning around
insecurity and marginalisation by trade unions to demonstrate theoretically and empirically within industrial
relations research the role of strategic spaces for action by workers and trade unions and the set of institutional,
economic, social and cultural resources that workers can draw on in developing their respective strategies.