Authors: Heather Connolly (Grenoble Ecole de Management); Stefania Marino (Work and Equalities Institute, University of Manchester); Miguel Martinez Lucio (Work and Equalities Institute, University of Manchester), Holly Smith (Work and Equalities Institute, University of Manchester).

Presenter: Miguel Martinez Lucio

Abstract:

This article examines the origins and the development of the workplace equalities agenda in the UK. It focuses on a 3-year research project which aimed to contrast the experiences and issues related to equality at work in terms of policy and regulation within the UK to other cases within Europe which have made an explicit and concerted effort to engage with a more progressive and inclusive approach to equality. Through interviews with key individuals and experts, the article tracks the extant ‘marketplace’ of EDI consultancies and HRM professionals within the UK back to the unlikely context of experiments with municipal socialism. During the 1980s many local authorities, especially at city level, were sites of political resistance to a Conservative government. Yet these councils were not just an oppositional project – they were often progressive and radical sites of experimentation for a positive political programme. This article relocates and conceptualises the agential roles of what we term ‘equalities entrepreneurs’ and argues that these loose networks and diverse range of social actors from across the equality sphere continue to build consensus and develop the policy agenda within the contemporary workplace, despite structural impediments and constraints.