Legal mobilisation and identity formation in British trade unions: Bridging the spaces in-between?

New indie unions have appeared in the United Kingdom over the last decade representing low-wage, migrant workers. Small, agile, and confrontational, these unions use diverse and unorthodox tactics to make meaningful gains for their members. A striking feature of indie unions is the extent to which they utilise litigation as a tactic, particularly considering their commitment to organising workers and their more militant orientation. This chapter focuses on legal actions brought by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWBG) to obtain ‘worker’ status for those engaged in the gig economy, which would grant these workers a limited set of labour rights. The purpose of this analysis is to consider how the legal actions might relate to the IWGB’s labour organising work. Drawing on legal mobilisation and labour organising literatures, I argue that worker status litigation helps create a collective identity in workplaces characterized by fractured interests as well as individual identities more inclined towards the exercise of political agency.