bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Accounting and Accountability for Australian Federal Unions
Authors: Mourell Mark 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe amendments to Schedule 1B of the Workplace Relations Act have given the government substantially new means of controlling the internal affairs of industrial organisations. At the government's behest, the Review of Current Arrangements for Governance of Industrial Organisation (the review), used concepts borrowed from the Corporations Act as a basis for recommendations regarding union accounts, accounting procedures, fiduciary obligations of office-holders and organisational rules. This study is a critique of the review and the consequent amendments. It argues that notions borrowed from the Corporations Act are inappropriate for unions and will cause problems for them. The amendments also contradict the government's avowed policy of deregulation of labour market institutions.
Work Choices in Overview: Big Bang or Slow Burn?
Authors: Stewart Andrew 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe Work Choices legislation represents a concerted attempt to tilt the balance of labour regulation in favour of employers. It does this by allowing them to offer agreements that reduce or eliminate award or statutory entitlements, by making it harder for both workers and unions to contest management decisions, and by sidelining the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. It also seeks to ‘move towards’ a national system of regulation by providing that the majority of employers will be exclusively subject to federal rather than State regulation, at least for some purposes. Yet for all the radical nature of many of the changes, this is not the ‘big bang’ it might have been. Many features of the old arbitration system have been retained and there are genuine compromises at the heart of some of the changes. It also remains to be seen just how quickly employers will move to exploit the opportunities the new legislation offers, given its complexity, opposition from unions, and indeed the natural pragmatism or conservatism of many managers — and whether this will prompt further intervention by a government that appears uncomfortable with leaving it to employers to make their own choices.
Unfair Dismissal Law and Work Choices: From Safety Net Standard to Legal Privilege
Authors: Chapman Anna 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis article examines the amendments made to the Australian system of unfair dismissal law by the federal Work Choices Act. The main theme underlying those changes is one of contraction. Notably, a much larger proportion of the Australian labour force will now not have recourse to challenge their dismissal on the basis that it was “harsh, unjust or unreasonable”. This is the effect of the Work Choices exemption of corporate employers with up to 100 employees, the operational reasons exemption, the exemption of seasonal workers and the extension of the qualifying period from three to six months. It is also the effect of moving towards a national system of unfair dismissal.
Long Working Hours in Australia: Working-Time Regulation and Employer Pressures
Authors: Campbell Iain 
Published: March 2013

AbstractIn Australia, the proportion of full-time employees engaged in long hours, often very long hours, of paid work is relatively large and has been growing larger over the past two decades. This article describes and explains existing data and discussion in Australia, within a cross-national context. Primarily drawing on official labour force data, it begins by examining the proportion of employees engaged in long hours, trends in long work hours, and selected characteristics of the long hours workforce. It then links the discussion to overtime and the peculiar prominence of what is called ‘unpaid’ overtime. Growth in unpaid overtime seems to be the main component in the increase in the proportion of full-time employees working long hours. In seeking to explain these developments, the article describes the framework of formal working-time regulation and identifies several channels along which trends to long hours, whether based on paid or unpaid overtime, are able to flow. It then looks at the way in which the opportunities opened up by the deficiencies in regulation are taken up by employees and employers. It suggests that the key factor in explaining the development of long hours in Australia is employer pressure within the framework of weak working-time regulation.
Workers’ Education and Political Consciousness: A Case Study from South Africa
Authors: Cooper Linda 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis article poses the question, who or what ‘teaches’ workers political consciousness? It argues that this question cannot be answered in the abstract, but must be located in historical context. Drawing on a case study of a South African local government trade union, it argues that radical education traditions within the labour movement remain, although the trade union movement has lost much of the militancy that characterised its early years, and its education work has been weakened and compromised. The case study union’s education programmes are ideologically directive and transformative in intent. Radical learning does not only take place in these organised spaces, however; members’ participation in ongoing union activities develops their political understanding and working class identity, while moments of mass action ‘teach’ workers not only about tactics, but also about political and economic power.
War, Racism and Industrial Relations in an Australian Mining Town, 1916–1935
Authors: Gregson Sarah 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe goldmining town of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia has been the site of race rioting on three occasions — in 1916, 1919 and 1934. These outbursts have typically been examined as separate events, but, analysed together, they provide an opportunity to see racism, and anti-racism, as historical and social processes. In all these riots, returned soldiers, organised by a leadership often drawn from the officer class, played a significant part in harassing migrants and promoting White Australia. Through this lens, an important corrective to the dominant explanation of the White Australia policy is suggested. While most historians of Australian racism portray immigration restriction as a demand successfully won by the labour movement in defence of white workers’ jobs, the Kalgoorlie race riots expose a distinctly conservative case for employer ‘divide and rule’, anti-migrant propaganda and racist violence. Concomitantly, the local labour movement found that racial division among their ranks was a recipe for industrial defeat.
The Contemporary Growth Regime Has Been Ensured by the Australian State's Mutations (at Least until Now)
Authors: Chester Lynne 
Published: March 2013

AbstractWith the ascendancy of neoliberalism, the Australian state has not only remained strongly interventionist but has also expanded its sphere of influence and scope of activity. This is contrary to claims of a reduced, withered or slimmed neoliberal state. The Australian state's interventions have become increasingly varied in the overwhelming pursuit of structural competitiveness. It has developed an extensive ‘micro-structuring’ role, particularly through the creation of new regulatory instruments and institutions, but has not relinquished its economic ‘macro-structuring’ role notwithstanding changes to macroeconomic policy priorities. The Australian state's interventions have shaped all institutional forms comprising the mode ofrégulationthat guides and supports the accumulation regime. This article discusses the reconfiguration of the Australian state and the forms of its ongoing interventions which have secured and sustained the contemporary growth regime.
Housing and the Global Financial Crisis: US versus Australia
Authors: Stapledon Nigel 
Published: March 2013

AbstractIn the housing cycle which started in 1996, Australian house prices have risen more than those in the US, prima facie suggesting that Australian prices should fall sharply. This paper questions that simple hypothesis. The reasons explored are: Australian prices have risen significantly less than those in coastal California, the more valid comparison; the Australian housing finance system contains fewer of the structural weaknesses of the US system; fundamentals in the form of the decline in real interest rates explain most, but not all, of the price rise; and macroeconomic conditions for housing in Australia are more favourable to weathering the global financial crisis.
What Can Data on Educational Outcomes Reveal regarding Australian Children’s Right to Develop ‘to Their Fullest Potential’?
Authors: Redmond Gerry 
Published: March 2013

AbstractIs Australia fulfilling its obligations towards its children, in particular fostering their development to their fullest potential, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child? This article addresses this complex question by elaborating three alternative conceptualisations of the right to development to one's fullest potential, based on the literature on human rights principles, and on the writings of the philosophers John Rawls, Michael Walzer, and Amartya Sen. The analysis suggests that while Australia performs well in comparison with other rich countries according to indicators of educational achievement, disparities in educational outcomes are large, implying that many children fail to realise their right to education to their fullest potential. This is not surprising. More surprising is the contrast between the diligence with which educational outcomes in Australia are measured, and the lack of accurate information on public resource inputs (except at the most highly aggregated levels) to achieve those outcomes. The paper concludes that while the measurement of student outcomes is an important step in the realisation of all Australian children's right to education to their fullest potential, the failure to accurately monitor resource inputs represents an equal failure by Australian governments to protect and promote children's rights.
Globalisation and the Commodification of Labour: Temporary Labour Migration
Authors: Rosewarne Stuart 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThere has been a qualitative shift in the character of international labour migration with increased temporary labour migration. With circumscribed employment rights, the increased significance of temporary migrant workers underscores arguments that globalisation has engendered a more profound commodification of labour. The instrumentalist approach, especially of international financial institutions in promoting temporary labour migration as a panacea for development, reinforces this impression. Encapsulated in migration-development discourse, labour migration, like other commodities, is presented as a means of generating export revenue for the South. Karl Polanyi's critique of this market-defined construct of labour as a commodity, when labour can only ever be a fictitious commodity, provides a basis for contesting the representation of labour in the migration-development discourse. However, recourse to a Marxist method is held to be essential if we are to move beyond an appreciation of the process in order to interrogate the rationale that is driving the transformation of labour.
From Blackbirds to Guestworkers in the South Pacific. Plus ça change…?
Authors: Connell John 
Published: March 2013

AbstractLabour migration from the Pacific to Australasia has experienced two distinct phases with acute structural similarities. Late nineteenth century migration brought Melanesian migrants to Queensland cane plantations, notably from the New Hebrides (Vanuatu). A century later, early twenty-first century agricultural shortages took migrants from several island states to New Zealand and Australia. Migrants moved from semi-subsistence agricultural systems — where income generation was trivial — in search of incomes, goods and experience(s). Forced migration gave way to conscious choice. Similarities in the organisation of recruitment, acquisition of income and skills and improved material well-being attend both phases. Women have been more likely to participate in the second phase. Overall outcomes have been unequal with the principal gains accrued in destinations rather than by the migrants or their home islands.
‘It’s a Discrimination Law Julia, But Not As We Know It’: Part 3-1 of the Fair Work Act
Authors: Rice Simon , Roles Cameron 
Published: March 2013

AbstractAt first glance, Part 3–1 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) seems to overlap with long-established anti-discrimination laws, offering protection against adverse, attribute-based conduct in employment. On close analysis, however, it turns out to be a new and quite different regime. Although the Fair Work Act offers a simple alternative to dated and complicated anti-discrimination laws, its provisions are at times overly-simple, raising uncertainty about how they will operate. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the approach to discrimination protection in the Fair Work Act, while an important addition to the remedies available to Australian workers, is compromised by failing to take account of lessons learned in the long history of anti-discrimination law.
Labour, Commodities and the Labour Market: A Heterodox Perspective
Authors: White Graham 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe article sheds light on the proposition that labour is a commodity by considering from a fundamental theoretical perspective whether labour is subject to the same market forces which apply to commodities in general in capitalist economies. It suggests that no spontaneous competitive force exists within capitalism that would adjust labour demand to its supply, in contrast to the adaptation of supply to the demand for commodities in general. This result is argued without reference to assumptions about inflexibilities or impediments in labour or other markets, or institutional features peculiar to ‘the labour market’. Its explanation of why labour markets do not clear is at odds with a core tenet underlying orthodox economic theory of the last century, which has acted as a fundamental benchmark for most theorising about labour to the present day. Rejection of this tenet is at the heart of a heterodox explanation of unemployment, the real wage and income distribution in capitalist economies.
Moral Sentiments and the Minimum Wage
Authors: Plowman David H. , Perryer Chris 
Published: March 2013

AbstractAdam Smith is widely regarded as the father of political economics, and as one who provided the philosophical underpinnings of much of neoclassical economics. Since the mid-1970s there has been renewed interest in, and reinterpretation of, Smith’s work. This paper looks at two aspects of this reinterpretation, the first of which is Smith’s writing on wages. Smith was an advocate of high wages, a view that strongly contrasted with the received wisdom of the day. He considered that a wage which provided for a reasonable standard of living was essential for the development of an economy. The second aspect encompasses Smith’s notion of the subsistence wage which traces its historic lineage to the Greek philosophers. The paper concludes that Smith, the champion of ‘liberty’ and non-government interference in markets, would probably have supported the notion of minimum wages, such as are now mandated in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Nevertheless, the mandating of minimum wages is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the achievement of living wage outcomes.
Deskilling: A New Discourse and Some New Evidence
Authors: Fraser Doug 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis article provides a brief introduction to a research program which has been under way since 2007 to examine, using data from a large-sample panel survey, whether jobs in Australia are becoming more or less skilful over time. It redefines the debate on deskilling which ran through the 1970s and 1980s by expanding the focus beyond simple job quality to issues of current policy interest, notably the contribution of skill to innovation and productivity. To map this kind of dynamism it is necessary to use a metric capable of capturing change over short periods. This is achieved by adding a third dimension, skill-intensity, to Spenner’s classic definition of skill in terms of two loosely related constructs, worker autonomy/control and substantive job complexity. Data drawn from the first eight waves of HILDA are analysed to demonstrate that this metric is capable of capturing statistically significant change in the average skill content of jobs over much shorter periods than was possible with the metrics used in earlier decades. The broadly parallel aggregate trendlines for skill-intensity and autonomy/control suggest that these two dimensions are linked in the way Spenner suggests, even though major discrepancies appear between them in some industries and occupations.
Exploring Skill Ecosystems in the Australian Meat Processing Industry: Unions, Employers and Institutional Change
Authors: Cooney Richard , Jerrard Marjorie , Donohue Ross , Kimberley Nell 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThis article discusses the concept of the skill ecosystem in the context of the network oriented literature on learning and skill acquisition. Three critical features of skill ecosystems are identified and then applied to an analysis of the abattoir sector of the Australian meat processing industry. The analysis highlights the important role of the employee union in the skill ecosystem, including maintaining a flow of new entrants into the sector. The article then examines the impact of major institutional change, through the deregulation of industrial relations, on the ecosystem. It concludes by discussing the applicability of the skill ecosystem concept to a mature, low-skill industry such as meat processing and then draws some conclusions about the limitations of the skill ecosystem concept itself.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: Contradictions in Australia and in the Asia Pacific Region
Authors: Ranald Patricia 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is currently being negotiated between the US, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Peru, Chile, Vietnam and Malaysia. The TPPA is intended to multilateralise the bilateral legally binding agreements the US has with four of these countries, including Australia, as the building block for a legally binding Free Trade Agreement in the Asia Pacific area. The TPPA re-opens many of the issues debated in the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement in 2004. These include pressures from US industry groups for changes to Australian regulation like the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, regulation and labelling of genetically engineered foods and local content rules for Australian media. The paper analyses the endurance of the agenda despite the changes of government in the US and Australia since 2004, and discusses the contradictions and uncertainties of the strategy in Australia and in the Asia Pacific.
Collective Bargaining as a Minimum Employment Standard
Authors: Adams Roy J. 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThroughout the English-speaking world, collective bargaining has commonly been considered to be an option for workers discontent with the default system of management-determined conditions of work. In this article it is argued that, as a universally acclaimed human right, collective bargaining should be considered a minimum condition for everyone employed under standardised conditions of work. The government policy of offering workers a choice to bargain or to refrain from bargaining, in effect in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, does not meet that standard. Just as the equity goal of governments is the absence of inequality based on traits such as sex and colour, the government bargaining policy goal should be universal collective bargaining. Anything short of universality should be considered a social problem in search of a more effective policy solution.
Australia’s Tax and Transfer System under Review: Evaluating Harmer and Henry
Authors: Bateman Hazel 
Published: March 2013

AbstractTwo timely reviews of Australia’s transfer and tax systems were commissioned by the incoming government in 2008, although the GST, tax exemption of superannuation payments to people aged over 60, and pre-announced personal income tax cuts were placed outside the scope of inquiry. Most of the recommendations of the Harmer Pension Review have been implemented, but most of the recommendations of the Henry Tax Review have not. The Henry recommendations provided for enhanced equity and efficiency through a broader and simplified base, concentrating revenue raising on personal and business income, private consumption, and economic rents from natural resources and land. They provide an integrated blueprint for ongoing debate over tax reform.
Climate Change and Global Development: Towards a Post-Kyoto Paradigm?
Authors: Goodman James 
Published: March 2013

AbstractClimate change both reflects and transforms global development. Asymmetries of responsibility, impact and capacity reflect historical and current development hierarchies. At the same time, the imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions perversely empowers high-emitting newly industrialising counties. As inter-state negotiations enter a new post-Kyoto paradigm involving emissions reductions for ‘all Parties’ to the UN climate change convention, relations between industrial and industrialising countries, and more broadly between North and South, are re-orientated. This article charts these relations through two decades of United Nations climate negotiations, arguing the need to secure emissions reductions across the industrialising world opens up new possibilities for climate justice.
Sports Franchises, Events, and City Livability: An Examination of Spectator Sports and Crime Rates
Authors: Baumann Robert , Ciavarra Taylor , Englehardt Bryan , Matheson Victor A. 
Published: March 2013

AbstractWe estimate the impact of sporting events and franchises on local crime rates using the technique developed in Arellano and Bond (2001). For events, we consider the presence of Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League and National Hockey League franchises as well as whether a city held one of the respective championships, the Olympics, or World Cup matches. We find little to no evidence that sporting events or franchises are correlated with changes in either property or violent crime with two notable exceptions. The Olympics Games are associated with roughly a 10 per cent increase in property crimes while the Super Bowl is associated with a 2.5 per cent decrease in violent crime. On the whole, however, the presence of spectator sports does not seem to automatically carry with it any improvements in citywide criminal behaviour.
The Break-Up of the Eurozone?
Authors: Lucarelli Bill 
Published: March 2013

AbstractThe euro project is now at the threshold of disintegration as the fault-lines between the core/surplus countries and the peripheral/deficit countries experience a profound rupture. In the absence of political union or fiscal federalism, these centrifugal forces appear to be irreversible. It is difficult to envisage the current system, with its internal contradictions, surviving the crisis that now engulfs the entire eurozone. The present crisis is to a large extent the continuation of the longstanding neoliberal policies favoured by Germany, which have informed the creation of the euro. This article examines the historical context of the debt crisis and the institutional design of this flawed monetary edifice.