Chris Warhurst

Professor

Room N302
H03 - Institute Building
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Telephone

+61 2 9114 1951

Fax

+61 2 9351 4729

Email

chris.warhurst@sydney.edu.au

Overview
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Bio

Chris Warhurst believes that academics should have social utility and, in his case, work to improve understanding of work and employment. His research and teaching focus on the labour process, labour market and employment policy. From 2001-10 he was Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research which produces applied employment research. In 2007 he held a Royal Society of Edinburgh European Visiting Research Fellowship.

He has secured around 50 research contracts and awards from research councils, government, NGOs, employers and trade unions. Research has explored services work, union-led workplace learning, higher education student financing, the gender pay gap in financial services, and low wage work.

He organises his research around programs of research. One program examines aesthetic labour. He is the originator of this new concept and, with colleagues, has conducted a number of research projects on it, including internationally. Numerous journal articles have been published on this topic and a co-authored book is to be published in 2013 by Sage. A second programme centres on skills. He has researched skill utilisation and skill formation in the Scottish economy, involving Futureskills Scotland and Skills Development Scotland. With colleagues at Oxford he is currently co-investigator of an ESRC-funded project on graduate skills. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training (OUP) to be published in 2013. He also has a program examining job quality. He is an ESRC grant holder, co-organising a seminar series on Making bad jobs better. Three conference streams have been co-organised in Australia and the US, and an international experts conference in Denmark. He is co-editor of two journal special issues for Journal of Industrial Relations and Human Relations and co-edited a book Are Bad Jobs Inevitable? (Palgrave, 2012).

Chris has published widely in US, European and Australian journals for example in Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Organisational Behavior, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Management Studiesand Journal of Industrial Relations. Sole and jointly authored and edited books include: Workplaces of the Future (Palgrave, 1998), Between Market, State and Kibbutz (Mansell, 1999) For Sociology: Legacies and Prospects (sociologypress, 2000), Looking Good, Sounding Right (Industrial Society, 2001), The Skills That Matter (Palgrave, 2004) and Work Less, Live More? (Palgrave, 2008).

He is a former co-editor of the leading international journal Work, Employment and Society. He is a series editor of Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment for Palgrave and a member of the organising committee for the associated International Labour Process Conference.

He provides advice on employment matters to the Scottish, UK and other governments as well as campaign groups. He was a member of the steering committee for the Scottish Living Wage campaign and provided advice, for example, to the UK Government on the national minimum wage, HM Treasury's Leitch Review of Skills and Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector, the Scottish Executive, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Wise Group, Skills Australia and the OECD.

He welcomes PhD enquiries about aesthetic labour, skills and job quality.

All Newsroom items

Newsroom articles

Bad jobs trap looms for workers 01 Nov 2012

The Age

Professor Chris Warhurst is interviewed by Fairfax Media on the widening gap in the intermediate job market, which could potentially lead to a 'bad job trap' for the Australian workforce.
More join the working poor 04 Oct 2012

BRW

As manufacturing contracts, Australia is at risk of mimicking the United States as it moves towards a polarised society with highly paid people at the top supported by a large underbelly of workers in jobs that are unsustainable and unsatisfying, says Professor Chris Warhurst.
The Working Poor 28 Sep 2012

ABC Lateline

Australia has been warned to guard against creating a class of working poor. Academics are concerned the nation is heading the same way as the United States, with a large divide between low skilled and high skilled jobs.
Growing class of working poor in Australia 26 Sep 2012

ABC Radio PM

Dr Angela Knox and Professor Chris Warhurst, Business School, have been interviewed regarding Australia's growing class of working poor, which will be discussed at a national conference hosted by the Business School today and tomorrow
Grooming in the workplace 07 Sep 2012

ABC Radio National

ABC Radio National's Life Matters program has interviewed Professor Chris Warhurst, Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School and author of "The Corporate Body: the commercialisation of employee appearance", about grooming in the workplace.