Exposure to harm as a function of bargaining position: The class composition of hospitality workers in Sheffield

Abstract

This article advances a zemiological framework of work-based harms, as a means of interrogating the contemporary crisis in the quality of work. Such a framework provides a more nuanced conceptualisation and a stronger political framing of the various harms that are incurred in the workplace than alternative understandings. We critically appraise the development of zemiology out of critical criminology and review recent models which demonstrate the value and insights of the approach to the topic of work-based harms. Nonetheless, these accounts tend to neglect the role of worker resistance in determining the distribution of harm, and we draw on Class Composition Analysis from Autonomist Marxism as a way of better understanding the bargaining power of workers, which in our understanding is synonymous with their ability to resist the imposition of harm. We apply this combined framework to an analysis of hospitality work in Sheffield. First, we describe workers’ experiences of three significant forms of harm (employment insecurity, wage thefts and health and safety during the COVID pandemic). Second, we explore the barriers to union organisation, which very often are linked to the dynamics generating harms in the workplace. Finally, we examine how those barriers were overcome and harms effectively contested, drawing on the example of the Sheffield Needs A Pay Rise campaign.