Dr Jo Grady

Jo has published work and research interests fall broadly into the following categories:

• Decent Work in Decent Workplaces
• Job Quality
• Regulation of Work and Employment
• Labour Movements, Voice and Vulnerability
• Global Value Chains, Labour and Labour Process Theory

It does so by firmly placing the political economy of industrial relations and the labour process, within its broader capitalist context.

Given this overarching focus, Jo's work examines (both empirically and theoretically) the power asymmetry that underpins the employment relationship, and the contrasting and conflicting priorities and interests.

Specifically it examines the political economy and public policy associated with employment relations (particularly with regards inequality, both in terms of pensions, pay and conditions), and how labour market reform shapes the experience of work for so many; how labour market regulation facilitates this; how this then is transmitted globally via financialized capitalism; and finally the dynamics of collective resistance to these issues by trade unions and workers.

In addition, her research analyses the ways in which financialization of the employment relationship plays out at macro, meso, and micro levels.

Rather than simply theorising financialization – as so many other have done – Jo's research examines and analyses how precariousness (which is institutionalised by legislation) makes citizens more amenable to low pay via activation labour market policies and labour market deregulation more generally.

It also examines how regulation (informed by neoliberal ideology) has helped produce an environment where organisations appropriate value from their staff as a contemporary strategy, particularly via company pension schemes.

Underpinning these research interests is a focus on developing an empirically informed, theoretical model of how ‘financialized capitalism’ appropriates shareholder value from employees, and the role that regulation plays in facilitating this.

To date this has included, re-examining the pension crisis in the UK. But also, connecting this more broadly to the development of ‘financialized capitalism’ and the pursuit of shareholder value.