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The latest fashion of ‘unconscious bias training’ is a diversity intervention based on unproven suppositions and is unlikely to help eliminate racism in the workplace. Knowing about bias does not automatically result in changes in behaviour by managers and employees. Even if ‘unconscious bias training’ has the theoretical potential to change behaviour, it will depend on the type of racism: symbolic/modern/colour-blind, aversive or blatant. In addition, even if those deemed racist are motivated to change behaviour, structural constraints can militate against pro-diversity actions. Agency is overstated by psychology-inspired ‘unconscious bias training’ proponents, leading them to assume the desirability and effectiveness of this type of diversity training intervention, but from a critical diversity perspective (sociologically influenced) the training looks pointless.

In the mid-1980s, Daniels coined the term ‘invisible work’ to characterize those types of women’s unpaid labour – housework and volunteer work – which had been culturally and economically devalued. Scholars have since applied this term to many types of labour, yet there is little clarity or consensus as to what ‘invisibility’ means and what mechanisms produce it. Through an in-depth analysis of this far-reaching literature, the present article seeks to reconstruct ‘invisible work’ as a more robust analytical concept. It argues that work is made invisible through three intersecting sociological mechanisms – here identified as cultural, legal and spatial mechanisms of invisibility. Though they differ in function and degree, each of these mechanisms obscures the fact that work is performed and therefore contributes to its economic devaluation. Ultimately, this revised concept of invisible work offers scholars a new analytic tool to untangle the systems that produce and reproduce disadvantage for workers.

The potential role of artificial intelligence in improving organisations’ performance and productivity has been promoted regularly and vociferously since the 1960s. Artificial intelligence is today reborn out of big business, similar to the occurrences surrounding big data in the 1990s, and expectations are high regarding AI’s potential role in businesses. This article discusses different aspects of knowledge work that tend to be ignored in the debate about whether or not artificial intelligence systems are a threat to jobs. A great deal of knowledge work concerns highly complex problem solving and must be understood in contextual, social and relational terms. These aspects have no generic nor universal rules and solutions and, thus, cannot be easily replaced by artificial intelligence or programmed into computer systems, nor are they constructed based on models of the rational brain. In this respect, this article draws on philosopher Herbert Dreyfus’ thesis regarding artificial intelligence.

This article reflects on the theoretical and empirical challenges that arise when researching trade union strategies towards migrant workers. By bringing together the debates on migration and intersectionality in Employment Relations, the authors highlight the problems of conflating different experiences of migrants under a homogenous view of the ‘migrant worker’ and rather suggest to (1) take account of ‘migrant intersectionalities’ – including the category of migration status among other categorical differences in the workforce, and (2) to do so at different levels of the analysis (micro, meso and macro). This multi-level, intersectional approach we argue leads to a more nuanced understanding of the realities of migration at a time of major societal challenges for organized labour.

Intersectional analysis has been developing since its emergence from critical race feminism in the 1980s when it was used to conceptualize the inter-relationship of race and gender and, particularly, the experiences of discrimination and marginalization of black women in employment. While its contribution has been much debated within sociological and gender specific journals, its use still remains relatively limited within studies of work and employment relations. It is argued here that this field of study would benefit from greater engagement with and understanding of an intersectional approach to both the design and interpretation of research. Two lines of reasoning are put forward for this contention: firstly, that the intersectional approach contains an important caution against over-generalization that has been obscured; secondly, that separating the challenge for all academics to be more intersectionally sensitive from the methodological challenges of taking an intersectional approach brings the significance of intersectionality into sharper relief.

Despite expanding literatures on financialization, scholarship exploring its relationship to labour and the labour process remains under-developed. A further obstacle has arisen from arguments that novel financialized modes of value extraction render the labour process and labour process analysis less relevant. This article challenges that view and explores how the labour process is still a vital focal point for value creation and extraction. It sets out what scholars should ‘look for’ to understand the ways in which distinctively financialized mechanisms operate in non-financial corporations and how these dynamics are translated into outcomes for and through labour. The article then provides four key propositions, drawing on labour process theory, which specify how those mechanisms are operationalized and their consequences.

While welfare reform matters for workers and workplaces, it is peripheral in English-language sociology of work and industrial relations research. This article’s core proposition is that active labour market policies (ALMPs) are altering the institutional constitution of the labour market by intensifying market discipline within the workforce. This re-commodification effect is specified drawing on Marxism, comparative institutionalism, German-language sociology and English-language social policy analysis. Because of administrative failure and employer discrimination, however, ALMPs may worsen precarity without achieving the stated goal of increasing labour market participation.

This contribution proposes nimble intersectionality in response to McBride et al.’s article about intersectional research in the field of employment and industrial relations. Although the authors’ call for all researchers to be ‘intersectionally sensitive’ is positive, regrettably, by highlighting the problems with intersectional methods, they reinforce the widespread perception that they are too difficult to implement. While intersectionality is undeniably complex, this article argues that a nimble approach can help resolve methodological dilemmas. By resolving four basic methodological questions at the onset of a study, researchers can successfully use an intersectional approach to explore age, gender, ethnicity, race and class in employment.

The article considers the arguments that have been made in defence of social media screening as well as issues that arise and may effectively erode the reliability and utility of such data for employers. First, the authors consider existing legal frameworks and guidelines that are present in the UK and the USA, as well as the subsequent ethical concerns that arise when employers access and use social networking content for employment purposes. Second, several arguments in favour of the use of social networking content are made, each of which is considered from several angles, including concerns about impression management, bias and discrimination, data protection and security. Ultimately, the current state of knowledge does not provide a definite answer as to whether information from social networks is helpful in recruitment and selection.

In refuting Guy Standing’s precariat as a class, we highlight that employment situation, worker identity and legal rights are mistakenly taken as theoretical components of class formation. Returning to theories of class we use Dahrendorf’s reading of Marx where three components of classes, the objective, the subjective and political struggle, are used to define the current formation of the working class in China. Class is not defined by status, identity or legal rights, but location in the sphere of production embedded within conflictual capital–labour relations. By engaging with the heated debates on the rise of a new working class in China, we argue that the blending of employment situation and rights in the West with the idea of precarity of migrant workers in China is misleading. Deconstructing the relationship between class and precarity, what we see as an unhappy coupling, is central to the article.