ABSTRACT
The intensification of financial market pressures has encouraged the creation of new business models and practices that reduce financial risks for business owners. This process of ‘financialisation’ has been a factor associated with the growth of low-paid, insecure and precarious work. Drawing on developments in Australia and the United Kingdom as illustrative of developments in other liberal market economies, this chapter examines the impact of financialisation on employment relations and how the logic of financialisation can potentially be countered. It uses two case studies of fast food retail and supermarket supply chains to illustrate, first, the impact of regulatory gaps that allow for financial ‘value extraction’ on small firms and their employees and, second, how activists can use large firms’ aversion to shareholder pressures and reputational risk to seek improvements in employment relations.
