Disenchantment with traditional income-based measures of well-being has led to the search for alternative measures. Two major alternative measures of well-being come from subjective well-being research and the objective capability approach. The capability approach has been largely discussed in the context of development studies and economics and is mainly used within quantitative frameworks, but it also raises many questions that are worthy of discussion from a sociological perspective as well. This study opts for a qualitative approach to transpose capability approach in order to assess the well-being of female homeworkers in the football industry of Pakistan. The aim of this empirical research is to focus on the capabilities of homeworkers in accessing economic, individual, social and psychological aspects of well-being.

During its transition to a market economy, structural inequalities became increasingly apparent across China’s workforce, threatening social harmony. China’s 2008 Employment Contract Law, legislated amid policy debate, was intended to remedy these phenomena. We examine a crucial element of its remit: has its promotion of continuing contracts as against fixed-term employment contracts been effective? This is crucial for improving workers’ rights through secure employment. How have employers responded to this challenge to their prerogatives in terms of hiring and firing? We analysed data from 2007 and 2012 drawn from All-China Federation of Trade Unions surveys, which cover approximately 80,000 individuals. Using institutional theory, we discuss a variety of employer responses. We find that the Employment Contract Law has increased the likelihood of signing continuing contracts among migrant workers, employees in privately owned enterprises, and those with lower professional titles and who are short-term employees – all disadvantaged labour market categories previously. It has also significantly narrowed gaps regarding access to continuing contracts between these categories and matched advantaged ones. There is also evidence that some employers seek to avoid or sidestep compliance through cost-minimising worker engagement strategies.

This article analyses from a Keynesian approach the effect of wage devaluation on the Spanish labour market during the Great Recession post-2008. It challenges the pro-flexibility literature, which attributes to labour relations reforms the prevention of larger job destruction in the recession and a larger reduction in unemployment during the subsequent expansion. Instead, we examine the role of wage devaluation in the operation of Okun’s law and gross domestic product, using an extended version of the Bhaduri–Marglin model. We find that wage devaluation has not significantly modified Okun’s law and that through its impact on income distribution, the unemployment rate rose by 1.9 percentage points. We therefore provide evidence for the negative effect of wage devaluation on gross domestic product and the positive effect on the unemployment rate.

Theories of precarious employment based on the constructs of job quality and job stability have highlighted the issue of transitions, linked to gender and age, from long-duration employment in bad-quality jobs, into good-quality stable employment. This article uses Markov chain analysis to study the labour market transitions of South Korean women in different age groups. It shows the importance of differentiating the effects of contemporary labour market conditions, shaped by the forces of the moment, from conditions created by the institutional legacy of the past. Women’s traditional position in the labour market has resulted in age-linked gendered precariousness, while the conditions of the moment are generating a tendency towards less precarious employment. Transition matrices are developed for types of precarious employment defined by the combination of job stability and job quality, taking into account duration by age group, time period, and covariates. These matrices yield distributions of asymptotic prevalence, reflecting labour market conditions of the moment. The forces of the moment favour the predominance of stable good-quality employment, whereas observed prevalence at a given date is characterised by the polarisation of the labour market between stable good-quality and unstable bad-quality employment. Asymptotic prevalence reveals a steady increase in stable but bad-quality employment. Older women are observed mostly in unstable bad-quality employment, but labour market conditions are tending to attenuate this age cleavage over time, as the conditions of the moment are reducing the proportions of older women in stable bad-quality and unstable good-quality employment. The conclusion is an age-based polarisation, in which older women are faring badly, but where possibilities are now opening up to younger South Korean women, reflected in the sharp break between the situation inherited from the past and the conditions of the moment. But possibilities for younger women will be realised only through a reinforcement of government policies to support career breaks and work–family balance through decent part-time jobs.

The decentralisation of wage bargaining in Australia has led to a widening of the earnings gap. There has been talk of a new phenomenon of ‘working poverty’, where incomes in a significant number of households fall below the poverty line even when family members are in paid employment. This paper examines the growth of working poverty in Australia from the beginning of the 1980s to the mid-1990s. The analysis suggests that the phenomenon of working poverty is real and has been growing. Low pay on an hourly basis does not in itself equal poverty, and the biggest increase in family poverty has been among employees not in low pay. Yet the proportion of low-paid workers who are also in poor families has grown considerably. In the light of these findings the paper discusses the possible impact of policy approaches such as tax credits and higher minimum wages.

This article understands contemporary austerity through historical comparisons informed by Marxist insights into the nature of the state. It argues that austerity policies make sense from the perspective of capital–labour, inter-capitalist and international competition. Differences among states over time, in terms of their size and international situation and contested domestic relations, produce varied imperatives towards austerity and prospects of effective resistance.

The article offers an analysis of the processes of neoliberal transformation, or the transition from ‘real socialism’ to ‘real capitalism’, which took place roughly three decades ago in Central-Eastern Europe, with particular consideration given to Poland. The key to a sociological understanding of capitalist modernisation is the combination of two perspectives present in social sciences: analysis in terms of shock therapy and the prospect of debt. Referring to the concepts of the ‘rent theory of ownership’, the role of foreign debt, creditor–debtor relations and the resulting crisis are submitted to analysis as the key factors of modernisation. Finally, the social, political and cultural consequences of the neoliberal transformation are also considered. These are argued to be growing right-wing populist and authoritarian tendencies.

In this qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with fifteen older public housing tenants in inner-city neighbourhoods in Sydney, the life circumstances of older public housing tenants are explored. A primary aim of the study was to interrogate the notion that public housing is a form of housing tenure that is no longer worth pursuing due to it being a harbinger of misery and social exclusion for its residents. The research suggests that this conclusion is, in many ways, mythology. For the older public housing tenants interviewed, being accommodated in this tenure form was viewed as a ‘life-saver’. Despite the ever-increasing residualisation of public housing, the provision of affordable, adequate and secure accommodation in convenient locations gave them the capacity to pursue a life that they valued.

This paper analyses the International Labour Organisation’s recent review of its Maternity Protection Convention (No. 103) and Recommendation (No. 95) from a feminist perspective, arguing the need for more comprehensive provisions in a revised convention. It also evaluates the provision of maternity rights in Australia, the Australian government’s position in relation to the ILO convention, and the capacity for international standards to extend maternity rights in this country. It argues that federal law reform is necessary to strengthen women’s maternity rights at work, and notes the importance of ratification of ILO 103 to such an agenda. However, the author is somewhat pessimistic about the immediate prospects both for the extension of standards in ILO provisions, and for substantial progress on maternity rights in Australia.

Professional athletes such as soccer players are expected to be in better health than the average member of their age cohort, if only because of the very demands imposed on them by their profession. Moreover, during their active career, their health is monitored on a regular basis. However, whenever a (former) well-known athlete dies, such an event is publicised widely. Perceived mortality among athletes may be distorted. In this article, we examine medium-term mortality of professional soccer players in The Netherlands. More specifically, we answer two questions. First, we examine if the mortality of soccer players is significantly different from mortality in the general population. Second, we assess whether mortality varies by team. We find that mortality among soccer players is significantly lower than in the general population, with no significant between teams variation. The methodology used in this article is easily extended to examine atypical mortality among other groups of athletes.

Public-Private Partnerships have been a popular public procurement policy in a number of countries including Australia, the UK, and New Zealand since the early 1990s. This article examines the experience of the Port Macquarie Base Hospital (PMBH), the first public hospital delivered under the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model in the State of New South Wales, Australia. Using a framework adapted from Macário, this study focuses on the political climate in which this PPP mechanism was implemented, identifying the underlying motives driving the use of a PPP to deliver public health services and clarifying the essential conflicts undermining the PPP process. The article covers the entire life cycle of the PPP hospital, from the initial contracting process to its eventual sale. A political desire to reduce public debt, allied with an ideology assuming private sector superiority, made this approach particularly attractive, but failed to deliver the desired outcome. The success of PPPs would appear to depend strongly on goal alignment in a multi-level political system. Auditing processes during the implementation process need to take account of the presence or absence of such alignment.

The Trade Union movement enters the 1990s at the height of its political strength. The Accord relationship has proved to be flexible enough to accommodate the political and economic needs of both Accord partners. The trade union movement’s strategy for the 1990s has been formulated within the protective umbrella of the Accord.

The trade union movement has both a vision of the future and an ambitious set of strategies aimed at securing its position within Australian society. The key challenge facing the movement is the reversal of the decline in trade union participation rates. Trade union amalgamation leading to the creation of 20 large efficient union federations will generate scale economies which will free up resources for recruitment campaigns and additional services.

The strategy of the trade union movement requires critical examination in the light of structural changes to the economy, the diversity of the labour market and new management approaches to human resource management. These factors require that unions adopt a number of diverse strategies to secure the future of the union movement. New and more decentralised union structures may be required to unionise workers in non-traditional areas. The union movement needs to constantly review its strategies to ensure they remain relevant to changing realities.

Increasing income inequalities in Australia increase the need to protect the incomes of low income families. It is difficult for the taxation and social security system alone to do this. Minimum wage rates have a role to play. Thus, the question of their effects on employment can not be sidestepped Traditional analysis of this question is flawed by the assumption of perfect competition and the use of particular equilibrium analysis. Labour markets have many features which distinguish them from perfectly competitive markets and feedbacks from other markets can not be ignored. Theory alone can not settle this question. A large number of empirical studies are surveyed. A widespread consensus exists that effects of minimum wage rises on adult employment are virtually non-existent A number of studies find effects on teenage employment. A number of others do not. However, even those who find statistically significant effects agree that they are small.

Singapore’s Progressive Wage Model, introduced in 2012 and mandatory in the cleaning industry since 2015, is a skills- and productivity-based approach to redesigning jobs and restructuring wages in the largely outsourced cleaning, security and landscaping sectors. Focusing on cleaning work in the food and beverage industry, this case study examines some early outcomes of this national drive to reduce wage inequality by improving the pay and conditions of commodified work in a sector subject to outsourcing-based cost competition. Based on interviews with cleaners, supervisors and managers, the findings suggest that in general, government and the trade union and employers’ association have worked together, to set wages and conditions transparently. Nevertheless, enforcement issues mean that cleaners remain vulnerable. They have limited information about their employment benefits and face various types of poor conditions, some sanctioned by and others in violation of labour laws. These vulnerabilities have structural roots, including rent imbalances and cheap sourcing, factors that commodify jobs. The implementation of the Progressive Wage Model may have helped de-commodify cleaning jobs for Singaporeans and permanent residents, but such outcomes are still dependent on non-systemic and unenforceable factors such as the kindness of individual supervisors. While a promising start has been made, Singapore’s initial efforts to improve incomes and conditions in low-wage work will nevertheless require stronger regulatory commitment.

This article draws on evidence generated in recent deprivation studies conducted by the author and colleagues at the Social Policy Research Centre. After outlining some of the main limitations of poverty line studies, the paper explains how the deprivation approach addresses these weaknesses and illustrates the insights that deprivation studies can provide into the nature of poverty in contemporary Australia. It then compares the results produced by a deprivation approach with those produced using a poverty line – both in terms of what they imply about the extent of the problem and who they suggest is most affected by it. The comparisons demonstrate that the reservations that many hold about poverty research can be overcome and that when this is done, the results become more compelling and thus have the potential to have a greater impact on anti-poverty policy.

The sudden decline in Australian manufacturing associated with the current resources boom necessitates a renewed examination of the foundations of industry policy. Since the reforms of the 1980s, industry policy has been characterised by an economic liberal approach, the purity of which has been compromised by political pragmatism — particularly evident in the continued support for the auto industry. This article examines the issues raised by industry policy, and the history of industry policy in Australia, as a context for a review of a Report recently released by the Non-Governmental Members of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Manufacturing. This review finds useful proposals within the document, as well as a strong statement of the need for interventionist policy, albeit buried in the main text and an appendix. That this discussion is not front and centre in the Report’s presentation indicates ongoing sensitivity about the main choice in industry policy — whether the government should selectively intervene, or leave the organisation of industry to the market.

Retrenchment is a significant element of current labour restructuring in Australia. This article situates retrenchment and the experiences of retrenchees since the late 1980s within a broader context of labour market flows. The article refers to labour flows at the level of the individual enterprise but it concentrates on the aggregate level ofthe national economy, drawing mainly on official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data. It points to several important factors that are neglected in contemporary discussion of the experience of retrenchment — the effects of periods of job expansion and job contraction, industry patterns of retrenchment and labour turnover, enterprise-level retrenchment and recruitment practices, and the place of ‘precarious’ employment as an increasingly significant point of departure and destination in labour flows.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, austerity measures have been introduced in many national contexts to reorganise public sector work and redesign labour laws and labour policies. At the same time, right-populist discourses and movements have arisen in ways that give both legitimacy and voice to the politics of austerity. Toronto, Canada, provides a world-renowned case of populist experimentation at the metropolitan scale, as the actions of Mayor Rob Ford typified this nexus of austerity and populism. Set in the context of Ford’s term as Mayor of Toronto (2010–2014), this article asks how the combined rise of austerity and right populism creates both new challenges and new opportunities for public sector labour in urban spaces. We argue that public sector unions are central in both the making and unmaking of populist austerity and identify potential trajectories for organised labour in the face of the continuation of austerity-driven politics.

Sri Lanka has a history of successfully managing communicable diseases by utilising its extensive public healthcare network of community clinics and public hospitals. This article makes use of Job Demands-Resources theory (JD-R) to examine the impact of COVID-19 on nurses’ working conditions in public and private hospitals in Sri Lanka. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses’ job demands on public hospital wards included long working hours, limited workplace autonomy, minimal medical resources and high workloads caused by understaffing. Private hospital nurses experienced pressure from patients and their families to provide them with discounts on medical bills. Nurses allocated to work on COVID-19 wards experienced additional physical job demands from wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) for lengthy periods on hospital wards in a humid climate. Nurses on COVID-19 wards also experienced increased anxiety that they could transmit the disease to family members. While nurses experienced job resources such as social support from nursing supervisors and other nurses, they reported receiving minimal training in the provision of healthcare to COVID-19 patients. This combination of high job demands and low job resources increased the levels of exhaustion and mental distress experienced by many nurses working on COVID-19 hospital wards.

This article examines the Australian Pulp and Paper Mills Ltd. (APPM) dispute which took place in Burnie, Tasmania between March 3 and June 10, 1992. The dispute is placed within the context of major changes in Australian industrial relations, which have been in process since 1986. Management and unions throughout Australia are still experimenting with a variety of industrial weapons to achieve their aims and goals within the parameters of the “Structural Efficiency Principle” and “enterprise bargaining”, constructed in Accords III through VI, from 1986 to the present.

It is argued that the crucial change during the past six years has been the ability of companies to re-establish managerial prerogative through litigation. This has provided management with the power to confront secondary issues and agents of change such as the Accord, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, Structural Efficiency, Enterprise Bargaining and Restructuring with a new vigour, toughness and effectuality. Increasingly docile, debilitated and legally disabled union officials and workers seem to be coming to the view that a union victory occurs if the company agrees to abide by the law while directing its workforce, and recognises the workers’ right to be represented by a “third party”.