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This paper aims to examine the more militant response of a minority of workers to collective redundancy and restructuring in Britain since 2007.

The paper deploys secondary sources to develop a series of grounded micro‐factors to help explain the presence and absence of the deployment of the occupation tactic.

Some headway is made in explaining why only a limited number of occupations took place against redundancy and restructuring.

The method of occupation was not shown to be as effective as might have been thought in opposing redundancies.

These concern union strategies and tactics for resistance to redundancy and restructuring.

The paper provides a grounded explanation of the phenomenon and incidence of worker occupations against collective redundancy and closure.

The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the special issue on “Collective worker responses to redundancy and restructuring”.

The editorial provides an overview and introduces the papers which make up the special issue.

The six papers facilitate a deeper understanding of the issues and dynamics involved in worker resistance and response to the crisis of neo‐liberal capitalism.

The paper highlights how the papers in the special issue add new insights into the topics at hand.

The purpose of this paper is to examine contemporary sex worker labour unionism in a number of major western economies because it now faces an acute historical dilemma of being forced into acting as the antithesis of what it professes and aims to be, namely, elite pressure groups.

Interviews and structured e‐mail dialogues with sex worker union activists were supplemented with an array of secondary sources and documentation, the authors of which are sex workers union activists themselves.

This loss of initial momentum for sex worker unionization projects concerned paucity of human resources, the limited spread of a “sex work” consciousness among sex workers, and ambivalence from potential allies. Consequently, sex worker unions concentrated on engaging in political lobbying on public policy, projects of legal reform of sex work, and helping provide individualized assistance to sex workers inside and outside their worksites on health issues, criminal offences and business matters. Thus, nascent or weakened labour unions in the sex industry acted as pressure groups concerned with work issues in a way in which other pressure groups operate on non‐work issues, thereby forsaking a key characteristic of labour unionism, namely, the focus of collective self‐activity in and on the workplace and from a basis on having a tangible presence in the workplace through membership among workers.

This research is of value to researchers, practitioners and policy makers, for it shows how workers seek collective interest representation through collective means in an environment of “atypical” work and employment.

This paper contributes to a growing body of work studying sex work and sex workers from what can be termed conventional, sociological and organizational behavioural approaches. The result of this is to be able to understand the processes and outcomes of their activities and exchanges as economic and social transactions rather than deviancy.

This article critically examines the proposition that industrial relations in banking in the UK are undergoing a move from paternalism to adversarialism and then to partnership. It uses these as ideal‐types totrack and explain the developments in industrial relations and argues that the sectoris sufficiently diverse across space and time and subject to different forces as tobelie sucha straight‐forward and simple characterisation.

This paper seeks to examine the intriguing juxtaposition of a bona fide independent union for journalists in the UK, which is vocal about editorial standards and interference, yet has seldom taken collective action to respond to such instances.

A grounded approach to this phenomenon is used by way of examining the intersection of the nature and influence of journalistic professionalism, the journalists' material and economic interests and the particular approach of the union to both these matters. The data are based on qualitative fieldworks supplemented by secondary sources.

The journalists and their union have yet to identify and articulate the conditions, which give rise to this situation and a strategy for defending their professional interests which is compatible with and supportive of strategies for defending their material interests.

There is a need to develop a strategy by which journalists can collectively exert more influence over editorial content.

The quality of content of newspapers could be enhanced by the greater influence of journalists as a collective body.

The purpose of this article is to examine the processes and outcomes under which employers in the magazine industry in the UK ended the collective bargaining agreements for journalists with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and instituted a unilateral‐based regime in the employment relationship.

The research data were generated primarily via interviews with lay office holders and full‐time paid officials of the NUJ.

The journalists' union maintained a presence despite employer hostility and has been able to use this as a basis to regain collective bargaining agreements. Nonetheless, the relative weakness of the NUJ has meant that it has been unable to date to force the magazine employers into conducting genuine collective bargaining. This represents a case of impeded but not dissipated “union renewal”, suggesting the union renewal could be termed as being of a “stunted” nature.

The findings of the research should be taken as being preliminary given that the NUJ has only recently regained union recognition and begun conducting collective bargaining again. A longer timescale will allow more definitive judgements to be made.

The paper indicates the significant challenges that trade unions face to reassert themselves in the workplace in the face of employer ambivalence and hostility despite regaining formal union recognition rights.

This paper provides empirical evidence of how trade unions are progressing after regaining union recognition.

This paper aims to examine the antecedent influences and merits of workplace occupations as a tactical response to employer redundancy initiatives.

The data are based on analysis of secondary documentary material reporting on three workplace occupations in the Republic of Ireland during 2009.

Perceptions of both procedural (e.g. employer unilateral action) and substantive (e.g. pay and entitlements) justice appear pivotal influences. Spillover effects from other known occupations may also be influential. Workplace occupations were found to produce some modest substantive gains, such as enhancing redundancy payments. The tactic of workplace occupation was also found to transform unilateral employer action into scenarios based upon negotiated settlement supported by third‐party mediation. However the tactic of workplace occupation in response to redundancy runs the risks of potential judicial injunction and sanction.

Although operationally difficult, future studies should strive to collect primary data workplace occupations as they occur.

The paper identifies conditions conducive to the genesis of workplace occupations and the extent to which the tactic may be of benefit in particular circumstances to workers facing redundancy. It also contextualises the tactic in relation to both collective mobilisation and bargaining theories in employment relations.

The relative absence of worker occupations in recent years in a context of major restructuring and unemployment has raised issues in Spain as to the changing nature of specific forms of direct action. This paper seeks to argue that it is important, in the case of Spain, to discuss how worker occupations have been changing and developing over time if the changing pattern, character and impact of worker unrest and direct action is to be understood.

The research materials for this paper are based on a series of meetings and interviews with union officers and activists that draw on various projects on union development in Spain during the years 1983‐1988, 2000‐2002 and 2009‐2010, and the study of a range of secondary texts.

The paper suggests that, as well as discussing questions of motives, whether economic or political, accounting for the socio‐economic context and the changing nature of the workforce in terms of its degree of concentration, the changing nature of labour market stability, and the relationship of workers to “stable” workplaces and work is required. Additionally, there is a need to account for how workers reference and recall (or not) previous modes of mobilising and actions.

Discussing worker occupations should involve issues of political purpose, economic context, the changing nature of work and workers, and the role of memory and historical framing if an appreciation of their varying nature and presence within the landscape of labour relations is to be made. Hence, a multi‐dimensional understanding of the context of worker action is required.

The implications of the paper are that conflict of work needs to be understood in broader terms, and that worker related activities can be highly innovative.

The paper examines union and worker responses to the current recession in Spain and focuses on the role and context of unofficial approaches, especially worker occupations, to the changing workplace.