bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Temporary Agency Work Sector in Australia and Ireland: Modest, Growing and Under-Recorded
Authors: Burgess John , Connell Julia , Green Roy 
Published: March 2013

AbstractOver the past two decades temporary agency work has increased in relation to most sectors and countries. This growth reflects the internationalisation of the agency business which, arguably, has come about due to demands for an ‘on-call just-in-time’ workforce. While temporary agency work possesses several conceptual and empirical challenges for researchers, it also poses challenges for regulators. This paper considers some of those challenges concerning various definitions, classifications and measurement of temporary work while comparing the Australian and Irish experience. It is concluded that while agency work in Australia and Ireland is modest, it is growing, and the conceptual and empirical problems associated with its under-recording pose difficulties for the design and implementation of a regulatory code for this sector.
A Critique of the New Consensus View of Monetary Policy
Authors: Kriesler Peter , Lavoie Marc 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis paper seeks to look at the underlying framework of the New Consensus models of macroeconomic policy for inflation and unemployment, providing a post-Keynesian critique. In the light of this critique, the model is reformulated, with its basic structure intact, but with alternate post-Keynesian specifications of the Phillips curve being considered. It is shown that such modifications, either allow a long run trade-off between the rate of inflation and the level of output, the rate of capacity utilisation and, therefore, unemployment, or, in our preferred specification, changes in output and capacity have no implications for inflation over a large range of capacity utilisation. In either case, macroeconomic policy is restored to its role in maintaining full employment.
Comparing Australian Macroeconomic Management: Labor versus Coalition
Authors: Junankar P.N. 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis paper attempts to assess the relative performance of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Coalition governments in their management of the Australian macroeconomy. Given the problem of defining an appropriate counter/actual, we make comparisons using a number of different methods. Firstly we compare the averages of the key macroeconomic variables for the period of each government and then compare changes over the tenure of each government. Secondly, we use the method of ‘difference in differences’; that is, we compare the performance of the Australian economy with the US economy. This allows us to control for any features of the world economy that may be driving all the economies. A crude comparison suggests that the Labor party performed better on inflation and the real rate of interest while the Coalition performed better on growth and unemployment. However, there is no clear cut answer.
Indigenous Job Search Behaviour
Authors: Gray Matthew , Hunter Boyd 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThere have been a number of labour market programs that have attempted to increase rates of employment of Indigenous Australians by influencing job search behaviour. This paper provides the first ever baseline of data on the job search behaviour of Indigenous job seekers and how it compares to the job search of non-Indigenous job seekers. Clear differences between the job search behaviours of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are apparent. Indigenous Australians rely disproportionately on friends and relatives as a source of information about jobs, although their networks tend to have less employed members, and therefore are less effective than non-Indigenous networks in securing employment. Non-Indigenous job seekers are also more likely to use more proactive search methods than are Indigenous job seekers.
An Internal Labour Market Approach to Assessing the Gains from Outsourcing
Authors: Stegman Trevor 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis paper considers an aspect of the assessment of net gains from outsourcing, which has received, it is argued, inadequate attention in the analytical and empirical literature: This aspect is the analysis of team productivity, the essential element for the existence of ‘the firm’ in economic theory. The simple model presented here derives from the labour market literature of internal labour markets and insider-outsider models. The net gains from outsourcing within this framework are assessed by comparing the cost saving from production synergies within the administrated internal labour market, with cost savings from exploiting relative wage differentials in the external labour market. This analysis seeks to identify the determinants of the magnitude of these cost savings and provide a framework to allow their assessment to contribute as one facet of the ‘make or buy’ decision.
How Low Can You Go? Minimum Working Conditions under Australia’s New Labour Laws
Authors: Fenwick Colin 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe Work Choices package of legislative reforms has significantly altered both the institutions and the instruments of the federal regulatory architecture for setting minimum working conditions. This paper surveys the reduced role of awards and of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, before considering the function and content of the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard and Australian Pay and Classification Scales, as well as the role of the newly created Australian Fair Pay Commission. It argues that the Work Choices reforms have shifted power over the setting of minimum working conditions to the government, which will set many conditions directly, and to employers, who will be entitled to require employees to be party to workplace agreements that displace very many of the minimum working conditions that are otherwise purportedly guaranteed. These shifts have opened up the space for significant reductions in minimum working conditions, as well as for falls in real wages for those not able to benefit from wage bargaining.
The Australian Fair Pay Commission: Rationale, Operation, Antecedents and Implications
Authors: Waring Peter , de Ruyter Alex , Burgess John 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) is the latest institution to be created by the Federal government in the industrial relations arena and is one of the key pillars of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 (Cth) No. 153. In this article we examine the rationale for the establishment of the AFPC, outline the structure and operational details associated with the AFPC and compare it with the UK Low Pay Commission. The creation of the AFPC presumes some failings of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission with respect to its safety net wage case deliberations. We attempt to identify what these failings were. Finally, we consider what the implications of the creation of the AFPC will be. On this point the establishment of the AFPC must be placed in a context of ongoing legislative change to welfare access and in the other major developments in the Work Choices legislation, especially the creation of the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard.
Looking beyond the West? The Korea Employers' Federation and the Challenges of Membership Adhesion and Cohesion
Authors: Jun In , Sheldon Peter 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe KEF developed its identity, role and activities in the face of challenges to employers quite different to those that marked the history of employer associations in western countries. Only in recent years have economic and political developments generated perceived threats from unions and pro-labour legislative proposals. Instead, the KEF had to find ways of attracting, holding and uniting members in the absence of these threats. The result was a very limited organisation operating at low levels. As those threats emerged more fully through Korea's democratisation process, the KEF responded to pressures to raise its profile, broaden its activities and sharpen its identity. In seeking to attract and retain members and to develop internal cohesion, macroeconomic and macro-political developments have been of crucial importance, as has the central role of large employers among the KEF membership.
Changes over Time in Male and Female Employment Ratios in Australia
Authors: Dixon Robert 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis paper investigates changes over time in the proportion of the male and female population aged 15 and over who are employed. It is especially aimed at studying the influence of changes in the age composition of the population on this indicator. The main findings are: (a) while the underlying trends for males and females are in the opposite direction, both male and female employment ratios fall in recession and rise in recoveries; (b) changes in the age composition of the population (ageing, per se) can explain only a very small amount of the changes in the aggregate employment ratio for both males and females over the period 1978–2001; (c) the falling aggregate male employment ratio is not primarily or even largely a result of movements out of employment by older workers, indeed, over half of the reduction in the aggregate employment ratio for males is due to falling employment ratios for prime working-age males. Policy implications are discussed in the concluding section.
Varieties of Workplace Learning: An Introduction
Authors: Boughton Bob , Junor Anne , Hampson Ian 
Published: March 2013

AbstractDespite twenty years of training reform’s in Australia, there are widespread concerns about a ‘skills crisis’. This raises the question: to what extent is this a training crisis, and to what extent is it a crisis in the retention of skilled workers, exacerbated by the new relationships of the workplace? In assembling two quite distinct sets of viewpoints, this symposium invites readers to adopt a broad view of worker education. It includes voices who argue that skills training is but one element of workplace learning, the other being the acquisition of contextual knowledge, formal or tacit, about the employer-employee relationship. The first perspective is a critique of a recent attempt to train managers in the efficient use of ‘relationship’ skills. From here, a longer-term perspective demonstrates how the narrow skills approach can be traced to diffusion of Taylor’s educational theory through formal and community-based vocational education systems in NSW. A new perspective is then introduced by a conversation among adult educators, who take the view that workplace learning inevitably involves learning about employer/employee relations. Contributions from South Africa, Canada and Australia consider the relationship between practical activity and the gaining of two aspects of this awareness — union activism and class consciousness. They explore approaches to union renewal and employee participation in shaping learning. Noting the decline of working class communities and of working class education movements, the symposium ends with a suggested explanation for the fluctuating class awareness of those whom the Australian labour movement is currently addressing as ‘working people’.
Management Development as Public Policy: Australia’s Frontline Management Initiative (FMI) 1995–2002
Authors: Rozario Anne , Hampson Ian 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis is one of few empirical studies of the implementation of the Frontline Management Initiative. It is based on qualitative research in six Australian organizations. Arising from a 1990s policy view, represented by the Karpin Report, that Australia’s competitive weakness was partly an outcome of poor management capabilities, the FMI was introduced in order to train first-line supervisors, who were seen as key in changing work practices. The FMI, however, suffered from the weaknesses in competence-based training (CBT), exacerbated by problems in the Australian National Training Framework. Lack of uniformity in curricula and standards, coupled with a fuzziness in defining frontline management, undermined this exercise in management development as public policy. Narrowly-specified outcomes did not deliver the claimed ease of assessment but undermined content. More fundamentally, ‘unitarist’ assumptions such as those underpinning the FMI are based on an inadequate understanding of workplace learning. Even the highly structured CBT approach cannot prevent learners from exploring their own interests and affirming their own counter- identity, in ways that may run counter to enterprise productivity.
Why Don’t Working People Want to Be Working Class Any More?: Class Identity and Education in 21st Century Australia
Authors: Merlyn Teri 
Published: March 2013

AbstractContemporary Australian workers appear reluctant to identify as working class. The article argues the inadequacy of structural explanations of declining working class consciousness, such as the claimed broadening and flattening of the middle class. Instead, it explores the interacting roles of economic conditions and worker education in the decline in workers’ class identification. The educational focus is on the decline of those informal popular education institutions that in Britain and Australia until the mid-twentieth century had aided the articulation and transmission of class identity through programs of literacy and literature, autodidacticism and political activity. Recent hard times have not been sufficient in themselves to trigger a revival of class consciousness, without the help of some vehicle of working class political self-education. The popular media have thus been able to step in, co-opting the icon of the independent battler — a non-collective symbol of traditional longing to escape oppression. Recent promising efforts to build a collective identity around the term ‘working people’ fall short of fostering class identification.
Farewell to Tax Neutrality: The Implications for an Aging Population
Authors: St. John Susan 
Published: March 2013

AbstractIn the light of the financial consequences of longevity, the potential for widening living standards as the population ages, and the perception of an increased burden by the working age population, recent policy changes in New Zealand appear far from ideal. For nearly twenty years, the retirement system has comprised just a universal state pension, called New Zealand Superannuation, and voluntary unsubsidised private saving. The decision in the late 1980s to promote tax neutrality for saving was critical to attaining a cost-effective, adequate, equitable and sustainable retirement income for all in an uncertain future. Nevertheless, a level playing field was only partially achieved and by the early 2000s, large imbalances in the economy were apparent. Strident calls to promote saving gradually undermined the accord around tax neutrality for retirement saving leading in 2007 to the re-introduction of tax incentives for certain types of saving, and other types of state intervention in private provision. This paper examines how the twenty year experiment with tax neutrality is coming to an end and the implications this has for the support of an aging population experiencing increased longevity.
‘We’ve Got This New Legislation’: A Review Article on Australia@Work and other 2007 Reports on WorkChoices
Authors: Fieldes Diane 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe WorkChoices legislation was controversial at the time of its introduction. The controversy has continued as to what its outcomes have been, and in whose interests it has operated. One outcome of the legislation has been a proliferation of extremely comprehensive analyses of its effects to date. This review article on those reports concludes that the overwhelming weight of evidence is that the legislation has benefited employers at the expense of employees. However, this article provides a materialist analysis of WorkChoices and the wider employer offensive which contrasts with the dominant interpretations amongst the critics of WorkChoices. The paper situates WorkChoices as part of a longer-term employer offensive designed to maintain profitability by increasing the rate of labour exploitation.
The Future of Industrial Relations in Australia
Authors: Hancock Keith 
Published: March 2013

The institutions of industrial relations have proved to be more malleable than I expected in the mid-eighties, and the ‘system’ has, for better or for worse, been transformed.Underlying forces conducive to change have been the economy’s exposure to external competition, related changes in the structure of industry and employment, the pervasive free market ideology and a sustained decline in union density. More fortuitous factors, such as the antipathy of an ACTU Secretary to members of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, a Prime Minister’s entrenched hostility to the ‘system’, the Coalition’s unexpected capture of a Senate majority in 2004 and the High Court’s validation of WorkChoices, have also contributed to the present state of play.
The NSW Green Paper Twenty Years On: A Reflection on the Future
Authors: Niland John 
Published: March 2013

The 1989 Green Paper Transforming Industrial Relations in New South Wales, advanced 99 recommendations across a range of concerns. Some were quite prosaic, such as the scope for legal representation in tribunal proceedings and redrafting the regulations to the enabling legislation. Other measures, such as those to do with union amalgamations, OH&S in small business, and pay equity addressed problems specific to a system that was, at that time, the least reviewed in Australia. A third group of recommendations, which are more interesting in the current Australian policy climate, addressed the key design features of how an industrial relations system could be best made fit for purpose in a competitive world.Most of the proposed changes were implemented, either through ministerial actions or through two pieces of legislation: the Industrial Arbitration (Enterprise Agreements) Act 1990 and the Industrial Relations Act 1991. By applying a green paper process, these changes followed periods of submission taking and considerable consultation, with extensive debate.
Collective Bargaining under Trade Practices Law
Authors: Isaac Joe 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe Howard Government, supported by the Labor Opposition, legislated in 2007 to enable small businesses to engage in collective bargaining with large businesses under the Trade Practices Act. The object of the legislation is to facilitate greater equality in the bargaining power of the parties. Except where the small business sells goods/commodities rather than a service, a person who is ‘employed’ and the business that provides a ‘service’ are both effectively involved in the sale of labour or in the performance of work in the labour market. However, the legal concepts and procedures relating to collective bargaining in these two types of labour transactions are different. One, the ‘employment’ of persons, is placed in the category of workplace relations operating through labour law; the other, the ‘sale of services', is viewed as a commercial transaction, dealt with through commercial law. This paper considers the question of whether there are sufficiently significant differences between these labour/service transactions as to justify the application of two separate sets of laws to deal with them — one to cover transactions between employers and employees, and the other to cover transactions between small and large businesses. A case study will be used to illustrate the involved and unsatisfactory approach of the commercial law route in determining what is in essence a labour transaction rather than a commodity transaction.
Social Exclusion: Challenges for Research and Implications for Policy
Authors: Saunders Peter 
Published: March 2013

AbstractSocial exclusion is influencing how social policy issues are conceived, debated, researched and addressed, particularly in Europe. It has also been given prominence as a focus of the Rudd Government's social policy agenda. This paper reviews the debate over the definition and measurement of social exclusion, focusing on its relationship with poverty, defined in terms of low-income. The analysis is based on the premise that conceptual and measurement issues can play an important role in identifying causation, and thus point to the kinds of actions needed to address the problem. The argument is illustrated by drawing on recent Australian research that shows that exclusion takes many different but often inter-connected forms, and that there is a low degree of overlap between exclusion and poverty. The implications of the findings for research and policy are briefly discussed.
The Current Financial Crisis: Causes and Policy
Authors: Kriesler Peter 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe driver of the current crisis is the collapse in domestic aggregate demand, originating from international factors. It is important, therefore, to consider potential areas where aggregate demand can be expected to increase in order to understand the possibility of recovery. The current crisis was preceded by an unprecedented increase in the level of household debt, which will hinder the recovery of consumer expenditure. Consumption is also being affected by uncertainty with respect to both income and employment. Similarly, the outlooks for investment and net exports suggest that they are unlikely to contribute to the initial phase of recovery. This leaves the important area of government expenditure. It is argued that government expenditure, particularly in infrastructure and capital, is particularly important as in the short run it contributes directly to demand, while, in the longer run it boosts growth and productivity. Finally, approaches to financing the implications of increased government expenditure are examined.
‘The Current Crisis of Capitalism’: What Sort of Crisis?
Authors: Pixley Jocelyn 
Published: March 2013

AbstractKeeping an open mind on the severity of the financial crisis and its implications for capitalism, this article focuses on the role of the state and financial institutions in monetary regulation. Questioning whether orthodox economic theorists and policy-makers share the same world view as professional and central bankers, it argues that the monetary system has in the past twenty years been stabilised through trust relations, rather than by markets. Furthermore, in this process, which was not sufficiently recognised by the practitioners, such trust relations were unable to cope with the impersonality of money. The nub of the question about a ‘crisis of capitalism’ is how nation-states can possibly control money — the most anarchic and global social relation in the world today. The article questions Keynesianism and economic liberalism alike, by asking if it is possible for states to force global banks to take the risks of lending for development. It argues that the real focus of attention needs to be the practices of complex international banking networks and the way ‘banks march in step’.
Looking Back to Move Forward: The (D)evolution of Australia’s EEO Regulatory Framework
Authors: North-Samardzic Andrea 
Published: March 2013

AbstractIn the context of a 2009 review of Australia's legislation governing framework government equal opportunity for women in the workplace, this article traces the history of Australia's Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity regulatory frameworks, arguing that there has been a consistent devolution in accountability and responsibility over the years. Whilst there is considerable existing research on EEO outcomes drawing on publicly available reports, the weakness of the reporting mechanism means that evidence of workplace policy and practice has not only diminished but should also be questioned for its accuracy. Drawing from workplace case studies in three sectors, the article draws contrasts between espoused organisational policy and some experiences of women in these workplaces. It is suggested that this and similar evidence of limitations in our current regulatory framework need to be considered by those crafting new legislation.