Charles Umney
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charlesumney.bsky.social
Charles Umney
@charlesumney.bsky.social
610 followers 700 following 32 posts
Industrial relations, technology, sociology of work. Currently focused on technological change in warehousing work among other things. Co-author "Marketization" (Bloomsbury, 2022). https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/marketization-9781913441463/
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charlesumney.bsky.social
Doing some proofreading on our forthcoming paper: "What is human augmentation and why does it matter for the sociology of work? A conceptualization of worker-centred augmentation". Forthcoming in Work in the Global Economy. Email me if interested and wanting to discuss.
What is human augmentation and why does it matter for the sociology of work? A conceptualization of worker-centred augmentation ‘Human augmentation’ commonly refers to ‘smart’ technologies that integrate with the human body, like exoskeletons, wearables, or modifications like retinal implants, increasing its cognitive or physical capacity. Many definitions of it are problematically broad or questionable. Nevertheless, the idea has gained traction in journalistic and policy debates. Evangelists for augmentation may posit a near-superhuman synthesis between humans and machines, supposedly resulting in upskilling and empowerment at work. These claims have attracted sceptical analysis from scholars of work and employment, yet there remains a need for further development of a critical research agenda around human augmentation. This article catalyzes this agenda by proposing a new conceptualization of ‘worker-centred’ human augmentation that can be usefully applied in the field. Such a conceptualization requires mediating between giving due weight to the intractable material characteristics of individual ‘augmenting’ technologies, and exploring the channels through which human agency shapes their design and use. We also argue that engaging with human augmentation necessitates critical reflection on ‘human-versus-machine’ framings that remain influential in sociological literature on technology and work.
October 17, 2025 at 1:56 PM
charlesumney.bsky.social
"How does the local state mediate the relationship between technological change and work?": Forthcoming in Work & Occupations. Offers a typology for how devolved govt can intervene to shape technology's impact on local workers, esp in low wage jobs. @digitcentre.bsky.social @ceric-lubs.bsky.social
How does the local state mediate the relationship between technological change and work? Evidence from warehousing in England Abbie Winton, Charles Umney, Gabriella Alberti Abstract The debate on technology and the future of work has so far engaged little with the local state. This is surprising, since the local state’s role as a potentially progressive actor in employment relations systems is attracting renewed interest in sociological scholarship. Through a study of warehousing in northern England, we examine how local state actors can mediate the relationship between technological change and work. We show that they often questioned the policy orthodoxy that private employer-led technological innovation always benefits local working populations, and we develop a typology of three strategies through which they sought to engage with technological trajectories in warehousing workplaces: engagement and advocacy, activation, and conditionality. Our study also shows how their regulatory capacity was limited by the opacity of technological innovation in warehousing, confining them to “soft” strategies which enshrined employer discretion and market imperatives. It concludes by reflecting on alternative visions whereby the local state may become more empowered to shape the future of work.
September 23, 2025 at 9:25 PM
charlesumney.bsky.social
Many congratulations to @abbiewinton.bsky.social for this outstanding new paper in @ntwejournal.bsky.social! Essential reading for understanding technological adoption in retail workplaces, with a lot of additional insight into the implications of covid 🚨🚨👇👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Sociotechnical Change in British Supermarkets: Examining the Role of Labour Lead author Abbie Winton When predicting the future of retail work, commentators tend to focus on automation and labour replacement and neglect the continued role played by labour, particularly in food retail. To understand this role, this article draws on both interview and newspaper data to show how change unfolded in the sector from before to just after the Coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, it shows how increased technology adoption and use in food retail occurred alongside an increased reliance on labour. The availability of a flexible labour pool that was easy to scale and later disband enabled employers to respond to increased consumer demand rapidly. In contrast to futurist predictions of the proliferation of labour-replacing technologies, the analysis shows how food retailers continued to prioritise short-term solutions contingent on human labour rather than investments in longer-term automation programmes, reflecting historical patterns of sociotechnical change within the sector.
September 22, 2025 at 7:37 AM
charlesumney.bsky.social
Recently accepted at @wesjnl.bsky.social: "What does it mean to be passionate about your job? Three meanings of 'collectively oriented passion' in UK pubs". Pre-print OA here: eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/22...
Picture is of the paper abstract which reads: This article examines how understandings of passion shape people’s agency at work, through interviews with UK publicans. It addresses calls to rethink how “passion” is conceptualised in the sociology of work. While discourses around passion are often thought to legitimise individualised working practices, the article explores more collective interpretations. It analyses how publicans exercised agency in negotiating externally-imposed problems including the pandemic and exploitative relationships with leading industry actors. It identifies a collective understanding of passion centralising notions of community, which shaped participants’ agency in responding to these problems in three ways: providing motivation to persist in the industry; a frame for critiquing perceived injustice and (occasionally) mobilising against it; and a resource for reinvention in pursuing business sustainability. The main contribution is thus new concepts for analysing how “collectively-oriented passion” shapes individuals’ agency at work.
July 31, 2025 at 2:40 PM
charlesumney.bsky.social
🚨"Marketization" now Open Access. Based on 100s of intviews, examines price competition as a strategy in European political economy esp its role in class discipline and subverting democratic oversight👇Labour party advisors at Times Literary Supplement hated it but you may not😁

tinyurl.com/4vhfjy7w
Front cover of the book "Marketization: how capitalist exchange disciplines workers and subverts democracy" by Ian Greer and Charles Umney Front cover of a Times Literary Supplement edition which contains a review of Greer and Umney's book.
March 11, 2025 at 8:44 AM
charlesumney.bsky.social
Very happy to learn that our paper "Platform Labour Unrest in a Global Perspective: How, Where and Why Do Platform Workers Protest?" has been shortlisted for the 2025 Sage Prize for research. Several years of work went into this- You can read it here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
February 13, 2025 at 1:13 PM
charlesumney.bsky.social
Today we are hosting a workshop on how to improve work quality in low-paid sectors in Yorkshire, with participants from local govt, unions, charities and advocacy groups that work with migrant workers. Looking to find ways our research findings can help with this.
January 24, 2025 at 10:09 AM
charlesumney.bsky.social
Handbook for the Future of Work, edited by Julie MacLeavy and Harry Pitts, out in Dec. Dave Hesmondhalgh and I have a chapter, arguing that the large literature on labour platforms and platform workers needs to be rebalanced towards a focus on how non-labour platforms affect non-platform workers.
November 29, 2024 at 9:00 AM