Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Relations
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebooksecure.com/download/ebook-pdf-australian-workplace-relations/
12 From reactive flexibility to strategic flexibility in retail and
hospitality
George Lafferty
13 Restructuring Victorian public hospitals and the implications for
work and work organisation
Richard Gough and Pat Brewer
14 Global supply chains and workforce flexibility in automotive
components
Malcolm MacIntosh
15 The Australian Public Service: the challenges ahead
Bernadine Van Gramberg, Julian Teicher and Brad Nash
16 Conclusion: the current state of Australian workplace relations
Julian Teicher, Peter Holland and Richard Gough
Glossary
References
Index
8
Contributors
Santina Bertone is Associate Dean (Research) and Professor of
Diversity Management in the Faculty of Business and Enterprise,
Swinburne University of Technology. She has researched in the area
of immigration and work since the early 1990s, having won 50
external research grants and published extensively on immigrant
women, industrial restructuring, immigrants and trade unions, and
managing diversity. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney, a
Master of Arts (Industrial Relations) from the University of
Melbourne, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Monash University, a
Graduate Diploma in Ergonomics (Lincoln Institute) and Certificate
of Tertiary Education (Victoria University).
Pat Brewer is a Lecturer at Victoria University. Her research focus is
on public sector management with particular interest in health and
education. Her other major research focus is diversity and
accountability. She teaches across a range of management and
workplace relations subjects in Australia and Asia. Her current
teaching area of interest is strategic planning in human resource
management.
Dick Bryan studied economics and politics at Monash University and
Sussex University. He is currently Professor of Political Economy at
the University of Sydney. He has researched and published on issues
related to globalization for 30 years, with a particular focus in the past
decade on finance. He is the co-author of Capitalism with Derivatives
(Macmillan 2006). His current research is on the financial liquidity
and how it pertains to households, labour markets and the conception
of money.
Brian Cooper is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management,
Monash University. His research interests include the relationship
between human resource management and employee outcomes. He
has published extensively in the area of employee voice and its
outcomes. Brian lectures in research methods and has extensive
experience in quantitative business research methodologies.
Helen De Cieri is a Professor in the Department of Management at
Monash University. From 2004 to 2011, Helen was the Director of the
Australian Centre for Research in Employment and Work at Monash
9
University. She has researched and consulted with a wide range of
large and small organisations in Australia and overseas. Her published
work includes more than 50 academic journal articles and several
books. Her current research projects investigate human resource
management, workplace health and safety and organisational
performance. Helen has received numerous awards for her research
and contributions to education.
Richard Gough is a Senior Lecturer is in the School of Management
and Information Systems, Victoria University. His research interests
are in the areas of the sociology of labour markets, contemporary
employment models, life transitions of employees and the welfare
state, sustainable workplace change, quality of work and innovative
work systems in the health sector, the future of unionism and
workplace bargaining.
Peter Holland is an Associate Professor in Human Resource
Management, Director of the Human Resource Management Program
and Deputy Head of the Human Resource and Employee Relations
Discipline in the Department of Management, Monash University and
visiting Associate Professor at the University of Tasmania. He has
worked in the Australian finance industry and consulted to the private
and public sectors in a variety of areas related to human resource
management and workplace relations. His current research interests
include talent management, employee voice, and monitoring and
surveillance in the workplace. He has co-authored nine books and
more than 60 journal articles, monographs and book chapters on a
variety of human resource management and employee relations issues.
Marjorie Jerrard is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of
Management, Monash University. She holds a PhD from Monash
University on trade union strategy and the Australasian Meat Industry
Employees’ Union. She has published articles on the Australian and
New Zealand meat processing industries, trade union strategy,
community unionism in Australia and diversity. Her articles have
appeared in Labour History, the Journal of Industrial Relations,
Labour Studies Journal, the Employment Relations Record and the
Economic and Labour Relations Review. Her current research projects
include ancient Roman industrial relations and Collegia, and projects
with a number of Victorian and Queensland trade unions.
George Lafferty is Professor of Employment Relations at the
University of Western Sydney. He was previously Professor and
Director of the Industrial Relations Centre at Victoria University of
Wellington, having earlier worked at Griffith University and the
10
University of Queensland. His main areas of research and teaching
include the political economy of work, service sector employment,
neo-liberalism and crisis, unionism and workplace restructuring. He
has also occupied various policy roles at local, state and national
levels.
Stéphane Le Queux is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations at
James Cook University and a Research Fellow with the Interuniversity
Research Centre on Globalisation and Work (CRIMT, Canada). His
primary body of research involves trade union revitalisation, global
social justice and international solidarity. His latest work focuses on
labour politics in the wake of the global financial crisis. He also
regularly publishes on contemporary issues in Australian industrial
relations for the Chronique Internationale de l’IRES (France).
Malcolm MacIntosh took up an academic career after working in
policy-oriented areas in the public sector. He is currently Associate
Professor and Deputy Head (Teaching and Learning) in the School of
Management at RMIT University. His academic research has included
investigations of work organisation in several industries, including
manufacturing. He was involved in an Australian Research Council
linkage research project between 2005 and 2008, examining work
organisation and industrial relations in manufacturing. His current
research interest is the impact of globalisation on the institutions and
practices of workplace relations in Vietnam.
Devaki Monani is a researcher in the Cosmopolitan Civil Societies
Research Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney. She
completed her doctoral degree at the University of Melbourne in 2008.
Before taking up her current position, Devaki was a research associate
with Professor Santina Bertone. She has published in the fields of
cultural diversity, refugees, gender and international development.
Brad Nash is a senior executive working in the Australian Public
Service (APS), who lectures in human resource management at
Monash University, Melbourne. In the APS over the past 10 years, he
has worked across different departments/agencies, including the
Australian Taxation Office and Medicare. In these roles, he has
managed large-scale operational teams through to discrete business
improvement and workplace relations teams. His current research
interests are trust in the employment relationship, monitoring and
surveillance, and offshoring.
Anne O’Rourke is a Lecturer in the Department of Business Law and
Taxation at Monash University, where she teaches employment law
and Australian company law. Her research interests include
11
international human rights law, labour rights under international
conventions, employment law and workplace relations, workplace
privacy and corporate governance. She is currently working on a PhD
at Monash University, examining international framework agreements
and their impact on multinational company compliance with
international labour standards.
Marilyn Pittard is Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law, and
Director, International, Monash University. She teaches labour law at
undergraduate and postgraduate levels and publishes extensively in
labour law journals. Her co-authored books include Australian Labour
Law: Text, Commentary and Cases; Industrial Relations in Australia:
Development, Law and Operation; and an edited volume arising from
an Australian Research Council grant, Public Sector Employment Law
in the Twenty-First Century. Marilyn is a founding and current
member of the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Labour
Law, General Editor of LexisNexis’s Employment Law Bulletin and
Vice President of the national Australian Labour Law Association.
Amanda Pyman is Associate Professor and Director of the MBA
program in the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and
Economics, Monash University. She has published extensively in the
fields of workplace relations and human resource management. Her
current research interests include employee voice and participation,
comparative trade union strategy in the retail industry, the impact of
the Information and Consultation Regulations on UK workplaces, and
privacy and surveillance in the workplace. Amanda is an Associate
Fellow at the University of Warwick and a member of several
research centres in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Cathy Sheehan is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Management at Monash University and an active member of the
Australian Centre for Research in Employment and Work. She
coordinated major reviews of the Australian Human Resource
Institute membership in 1995 and 2005. Her publications have
appeared in Human Resource Management, the International Journal
of Human Resource Management, the Human Resource Management
Review and her recent co-authored text, Contemporary Issues and
Challenges in HRM. She is currently working with the Australian
Senior HR Roundtable (ASHRR) on an Australian Research Council-
funded project reviewing the role of the human resources function.
Julian Teicher spent many years at Monash University where, as
Professor, he held the roles of Head of Department and Director of the
Graduate School of Business. In 2010, he moved to RMIT University
12
Vietnam to lead the development of a business faculty. Julian’s
research covers issues including employee voice and participation,
bargaining and dispute resolution, occupational health and safety, skill
formation, privatisation and e-government. He has extensive practical
experience, having worked in the health, maritime and power
industries, and undertaken consultancy projects for governments and
industry.
Elsa Underhill is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Personal
Injury Management Programs in the Deakin University Graduate
School of Business. She has published journal articles and book
chapters in a range of Australian and international publications
encompassing the fields of industrial relations, human resource
management and occupational health and safety. Her current research
interests focus on precarious employment and occupational health and
safety, including labour market participation and post-workplace
injury, particularly among temporary agency and temporary migrant
workers. Her research is predominantly applied and policy focused.
Bernadine Van Gramberg is Professor and Deputy Dean of the
Faculty of Business and Enterprise at Swinburne University of
Technology. Her research and publications are in the areas of
workplace dispute-resolution, workplace relations and public sector
management.
13
Acknowledgements
Julian Teicher
For my wife and collaborator Bernadine, for her support of and input
into this and every other project. Special thanks to Hien Hoang Thi Minh
for the tedious task of reference checking the manuscript.
Peter Holland
14
Introduction: workplace relations in Australia
Julian Teicher, Peter Holland and Richard Gough
Our field of study was for a long time referred as industrial relations or
labour relations, and in Australia these designations remained
unchallenged until the early 1980s, when employer organisations –
particularly the then newly formed Business Council of Australia (BCA)
and later right-wing think tanks, such as the HR Nicholls Society –
challenged what they regarded as the anachronistic and obstructionist
collectivist/class conflict paradigm of the ‘industrial relations club’ (Stone
2006). In Australia, possibly the most influential and coherent critique was
that provided under the auspices of the Business Council of Australia
(BCA) (1989). The BCA posited a model of employee relations that
looked very much like an Australian version of strategic human resources
management (SHRM) (Beer et al. 1984), and this led the BCA to advance
two key propositions: first, that the key to enterprise success is in finding
competitive advantage; and second, that in the relationship between
employer and employees, there is no room for third parties. In other words,
in employment regulation unions, industrial tribunals – and even employer
associations – were a distraction, or at worst an interference. While the
term ‘employee relations’ continues to have currency in the Australian
academic literature, its usage does not imply endorsement of a particular
reform agenda; rather, it emphasises the shift in focus to the employment
relationship. In Australia more recently, the term ‘workplace relations’ has
emerged to describe the changing field of study to which this book is
devoted – for example, issues associated with monitoring and surveillance
and employee voice are very much workplace relations issues rather than
institutional aspects of the workplace in the twenty-first century.
Significantly, the term ‘workplace relations’ has also found favour with
both of the major political parties.
15
far from international political economy being peripheral to the study of
workplace relations, Chapter 1 demonstrates the centrality of the global
economy. Another attribute of these newer usages is that they place
employment relationships at the centre of the study – though this focus
increasingly has to be recast, as we explain a little later, and this opens the
way to a consideration of the literature on the nature of work and work
organisation. Such studies are truly cross-disciplinary, being informed by
the disciplines of politics, sociology and even anthropology.
16
necessary to reject terms such as ‘industrial’ or ‘labour relations’, but it is
necessary to recognise that these terms emerged in a particular historical
context in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and
Australia. At the same time, we do not reject the more recent ways of
describing our field; rather, we want to build on the analytical advances
they embody. The choice of workplace relations provides an anchor in the
contemporary development of our field in Australia, and reinforces the
policy context while providing a sense of continuity with the earlier terms.
From industrial and labour relations, we are able to draw an understanding
of the importance of institutions, processes and politics, as well as the role
of the state. From employee and employment relations, we draw into our
analysis consideration of employment regulation in its widest sense, an
understanding of the international and economic contexts, and a
recognition of the salience of strategy.
17
twenty-first century
The starting point for framing these questions is the role of neo-liberal
ideology and globalisation in influencing changes to the model of
workplace relations in Australia. Neo-liberal ideology has three major
aspects: a focus on smaller government with outsourcing and privatisation
of government business activities and lower taxes; minimising government
interference in individuals’ decision-making; encouraging self-reliance;
and reducing the level of government regulation to allow markets to
operate in a more unimpeded way (see Chapter 1 for further discussion of
this important issue).
18
living standards and wages on the other. This struggle was also played out
in the context of structural change in the labour market, with the growth in
female employment, the shift to services and the impact of new technology
on skills and job design, as we discuss in Chapter 2.
True to the evolving nature of the field, the international economy looms
large in our discussion, but debates on the nature and causes of
globalisation have been well rehearsed elsewhere (e.g. Stiglitz 2002;
Bhagwati 2004; Friedman 2005). Of greater interest is the way in which
globalisation has played out, and here too we remain consistent in keeping
our lens focused on the twenty-first century. A consideration of the Global
19
Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 highlights both the intense
interconnectedness of nations and the vulnerabilities of individual
economies and societies to these fluctuations. As we were compiling this
book, there were continuing threats of global economic crises emanating
from the parlous state of government budgets and the challenges facing the
financial sector in Greece, Italy and Spain. In the case of the GFC, the
impact of the financial sector on the real economy was perhaps the most
significant fact. As a consequence, in many developing countries the
engine of growth stalled and even went backwards, due to declining
investment, reduced foreign aid and a deterioration in the balance of trade.
In Australia, the pace of growth slowed but did not stop, due to the
continued strong natural resources demands from China and India and
timely fiscal interventions by the federal government. Notwithstanding, we
need to ask: What consequences did the GFC have in Australia and were
they enduring –for example, in the case of disadvantaged workers
Also relevant is the way the GFC underscored the need for state
intervention, not just to regulate markets but to stabilise the macro-
economy; however, these lessons were not learned particularly well in
most cases, and there has been a resurgence of the global march of the
ideology of deregulation. In the Australian context, there is a need to
consider the legacy of these global disruptions for workplace regulation,
particularly in the light of the contest between the competing models of
employment regulation provided by the major political parties. These
debates echo those that have occurred throughout the world, especially in
Europe, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and the United States. At a
more fundamental level, this is part of the dynamics of capitalist society, in
which advocates of freer markets – who typically are aligned with major
business interests – seek to shift the operation of the political and
economic system to create a more beneficial regulatory climate and to use
that influence to change the pattern and level of public expenditure. In
relation to this, we should consider the lengths to which the Republican
Party has gone in withholding support for raising the borrowing limit of
the US government. Until the Obama presidency, raising government
borrowing limits was a relatively routine matter – for example, during the
years of the George Bush Sr presidency, substantial increases in
government borrowing were necessary in order to finance a regime of
lower income taxes. In 2011, the Republican Party was determined to
defend low taxes and compel expenditure reduction as a condition of its
support for the passage of the budget. In terms of the political dynamics of
20
the United States, this is likely to play out in future years in welfare
reductions and the increasing vulnerability of low-wage earners. Whether
this will lead to increasing US competitiveness in the global economy is
doubtful, but it is a powerful manifestation of how politics and economics
impact on employment. This gives rise to the question: What has been the
trajectory of employment regulation and the pattern of social expenditure
in Australia in recent years?
21
decline in strikes been associated with the growth of alternative
expressions of conflict? Is it associated with the decline of unions and is it
related to management developing more sophisticated mechanisms for
managing conflict? This raises associated questions about the development
of union and non-union voices in Australian workplaces, which is the
subject of Chapter 7. The decline of visible manifestations of conflict also
prompts us to ask whether the trajectory of employment regulation –
particularly more vigorous enforcement of sanctions on industrial action –
has driven down the incidence of strikes and other forms of organised
industrial action.
The case studies serve another larger purpose: they are designed to
complement the earlier chapters and integrate the book. Unlike standard
case studies, which are added to the end of chapters for teaching purposes,
or cases developed solely for the purposes of graduate teaching, these
cases explicitly address the themes of the book. These analytical case
studies provide in-depth considerations of how the ‘topics’ and themes of
the chapters play out in real-life situations. Typically, cases are provided to
illustrate a point, but these cases illustrate the complex interplay of ideas
and so enhance the readers’ understanding of the earlier chapters. Finally,
it should be noted that teaching cases and questions have also been
22
included at appropriate points in the text.
23
Part I Foundations of Australian
Workplace Relations
24
1 Globalisation, economic policy and the
labour market
Julian Teicher and Dick Bryan
Chapter objectives
Introduction
25
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
XI.
— Niin.
— Kyllä sinä pääset. Ja kun palaat, niin toivon saavani pitää sinut
tyttärenäni.
*****
Tyttö nosti katseensa, mutta antoi sen painua alas. Eihän hänellä
ollut enää oikeutta.
— Miten niin?
Kaisu muisti, mitä Laurin isä oli sanonut hänelle silloin, kun hän
pyysi päästä lähtemään, eikä puhunut enää mitään.
— Minä tahdon ja — nyt minä tulen kotiin. Jos viivyn — niin kerro
terveisiä isälle ja äidille. Ja odota.
Eihän voinut kieltää, että isku oli hänelle raskas. Mutta se voisi
käydä vieläkin raskaammaksi. Laurikin saattaa vielä mennä samaa
tietä. Hänen täytyi nyt täyttää Tuomaan jättämä aukko. Voisihan
hänkin vielä sille matkalleen jäädä.
Juho mietti:
*****
— Tuskinpa vain.
— Kyllä, isä.
*****