This article provides an overview of the radical changes in workplace agreement-making introduced by the ‘Work Choices’ amendments to the Workplace Relations Act. It outlines the six types of statutory workplace agreement and the procedures, termination rules and content requirements associated with them. While some agreement-making procedures have been simplified, this has come at the cost of independent oversight. Furthermore, the government's overall regulatory approach is shown to be prescriptive, punitive and one-sided. The article contrasts the new workplace agreements with contracts and observes that alternative regulatory frameworks could readily have been created, with greater respect for party autonomy.

Meeting the education and training needs of low-skill working adults will require a transformation of United States workforce development policy. A significant component of this transformation is the development of education and training programs that are crafted around the needs of these workers. Traditional classroom based learning — which is inflexible in time and place — presents a series of barriers to low-skill adults. This article documents the relationship between educational attainment and labour market status in the US. It explores the extent to which the use of technology and online learning may help to equalise access to education and training by providing learning opportunities that can better incorporate working adults' work, education and family demands.

Collective bargaining can be of benefit to both employees and employers. Nevertheless, there is growing interest in individual contracts, as part of a broader agenda for labour market flexibility. In particular, individual contracts are being pursued by some companies as part of a human resource management strategy to increase productivity by reducing the role of third parties and promoting ‘common purpose’ between the firm and its employees. There is some evidence that individual contracts can indeed contribute to higher productivity. The challenge for policy makers is to provide sufficient flexibility in the area of individual contracts while preventing employers from using them to reduce wages and conditions.

This paper investigates the extent to which unemployment, particularly among older males, is hidden by the welfare system. It is argued that the official unemployment rate has fallen because of a decline in participation rates among older males since 1972, and a significant proportion of these can be accounted for by the increase in the percentage of males receiving the Disability Support Pension and the Mature Age Allowance. These males are considered the Labor Market Disabled, since the principal cause of them being on welfare is the weakness of the labor market in which they have traditionally found employment. The unemployment rate is then reconsidered after including the LMD into the calculation, producing a more pronounced hysteresis affect over successive business cycles. It is argued that active job creation programs are required to move these people from welfare to work.

This paper considers the implications of the decision of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in the April 1997 wage case (the ‘Living Wage Case’) for wages policy. The recent history of wages policy in Australia is analysed in terms of competing goals for wages policy and the changing priorities for these goals. The Living Wage Case decision is a continuation of developments in the Australian labour market that worsen the relative income position of the low paid, tend to create a two-tier wage structure, and worsen the prospects for reductions in unemployment because responsibility for the control of wage based inflation has been given to restrictive monetary policy.

Unless the global financial system is radically reformed – and the necessary reforms are looking increasingly unlikely to occur – it will continue to be conducive to financial crises. Government rhetoric and actions can often influence in desirable ways both the speculative actions that now determine the exchange rate and the effect of exchange rate movements on the domestic economy. Managing the exchange rate should start with Australian support for measures such as the Tobin tax that dampen speculation. In 2008 and 2009, exchange rate changes were helpful in reducing the impact of the global financial crisis on Australia, largely because of a very clear commitment by the Australian government to make preservation of jobs its top priority. In 2009, a rapid rise in the exchange rate was unhelpful. In the short run, little can be done about this, but in the longer run, it is possible to offset the adverse effects.

The use of exchange rates based on Purchasing Power Parities to compare incomes across countries and over time has now become standard practice. But there are reasons to believe that this could lead to excessively inflated incomes for poorer countries and in some cases also inflate the extent of real changes over time. Estimates of gross domestic product growth in the Chinese and Indian economies in recent years provide examples of this.

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this article re-assesses ‘post-communist’ transformation in the Baltic countries from the perspective of labour. The argument is based on a historical materialist approach focusing on the social relations of production as a starting point. It is contended that the uneven and combined unfolding of ‘post-communist’ transformation has subjected Baltic labour to doubly constituted exploitation processes. First, workers in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have suffered from extreme neoliberal restructuring of economic and employment relations at home. Second, migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in general, trying to escape exploitation at home, have faced another set of exploitative dynamics in host countries in Western Europe such as the UK. Nevertheless, workers have continued to challenge exploitation in Central and Eastern Europe and also in Western Europe, and have been active in extending networks of transnational solidarity across the continent.

Labour non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs) role in the reconstruction of Indonesia’s organised labour movement has been widely acknowledged. They are not, however, generally recognised as a legitimate part of that movement. This paper uses the Indonesian case to demonstrate how the existing scholarly literature has failed to consider labour NGOs as a form of labour organisation in their own right because they do not fit within practitioners’ and scholars’ definitions of what is, and is not, a legitimate industrial relations actor.

As governments move from being both a funder and provider of human services to a purchaser of services in private sector markets or quasi-markets, ensuring that providers do what they are supposed to do becomes more difficult. Agency theory and stewardship theory have been suggested as ways of overcoming this problem. This article argues that both are inadequate, particularly because they conceptualise the relationship as bilateral (government funding department and service provider), ignoring the role of clients in achieving organisational objectives. Co-production that recognises the role played by clients in the production of employment outcomes can provide a more useful way of thinking about relationships among key actors involved in the provision of employment services.

The link between inter-firm networks and industrial development in Taiwan has rarely been conspicuously identified in the extant literature. This paper highlights the existence of such a link, first in the labour-intensive phase of industrialisation from early 1960s to late 1970s, and then in the current phase of technology-intensive industrial development in Taiwan. However, established forms of inter-firm networks within and across the Taiwanese border have structural limitations to generate innovation from within the networks. This impedes further development of Taiwan’s industries, in particular those which are more technology-intensive. Using the information technology industry as a case study, this paper examines the role of the state and the private businesses in fostering the formation of newer forms of inter-firm networks which contribute to Taiwan’s further industrial development.

In the latter part of 1997, and the first half of 1998, Australian industrial relations was dominated by a major recognition dispute on the waterfront. Patrick Stevedores sacked its Maritime Union of Australia workforce on 7 April 1998, employing labour supplied by a National Farmers Federation subsidiary. The sackings precipitated mass picketing around Australian ports. The Federal Court issued an interlocutory injunction, which in essentials was upheld by the High Court 6-1, ordering reinstatement of the workforce because of the possibility that Patrick, the National Farmers Federation and the Australian government had conspired to thwart the Freedom of Association provisions of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Comm.). The dispute is further complicated by an unsuccessful attempt to train former and current military personnel as stevedores in the port of Dubai. This article examines and analyses major twists and turns associated with this dispute.

Climate change is most directly felt by people who cannot escape its impacts, including workers whose source of livelihood may put them directly at risk from high heat. Research on these impacts for Australian workers, especially the sociopolitical determinants of effective workplace heat management, remains limited. This article presents findings from a national research project that investigated these issues in collaboration with the Australia-based United Workers Union. It reports on the experiences of members exposed to high heat, explores how they address heat stress and how they relate this to climate change. The article expands understanding of the impacts of workplace heat, especially for indoor workers and those in lower paid jobs, through a focus on how workers articulate their experiences and understand and exercise their agency at work.

In an era where legally binding international trade agreements are increasingly shaping domestic regulation in a wide range of areas, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement between the US, Australia, Japan and nine other Pacific Rim Countries, representing over 40% of world trade, has been described as setting the standards for 21st century trade agreements. This article analyses why the negotiations have dragged on for 5 years, and the resistance to the potential impacts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement on national democratic decision-making on health, environmental and other public interest regulation.

From its foundation in 1919, the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) guiding principle has been that labour is not a commodity. Following an examination of the origins and impact of this principle on ILO and United Nations (UN) conventions relating to migrant workers, the paper examines how Australia has responded to such conventions. In this regard, the paper highlights the counterveiling influence of the neoclassical economic perspective on the way migrant workers in Australia have been treated and represented from the post-war period until recent times as either ‘factory fodder’ and/or ‘business assets'. Both representations, we argue, treat migrants as commodities. To challenge this approach the paper identifies how migrant workers have distinguished themselves from commodities through resistance to poor working conditions and also management strategies that treat them as if they were commodities.

The Contract Regulation Club has been the dominant force in Australian industrial relations since the latter part of the 1980s. Its membership includes major business and employer organisations, leaders of the Liberal and National parties, various regulatory bodies, ‘New Right’ think tanks and media commentators. Its modus operandi is doublethink. It advocates deregulation of employment contracts while intervening in their operation and demanding more regulation to ensure that they are loaded in ‘favour’ of employers. The Club has a vision of an industrial relations nirvana where employees voluntarily align their behaviour to the needs of the enterprise. The paper argues that this vision is fundamentally flawed and is the basis of the Club's demand for more regulation. The paper examines the origins and consolidation of the Club, activities and interventions after the election of the Howard Coalition in 1996 and major features of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 (Cth)

It is recognised that for efficiency and equity reasons that governments need to implement active labour market programs (LMP). Such programs can help to improve the matching of labour supply and demand, reduce wage inflation pressures generated where labour markets are subject to supply shortages and bottlenecks, assist disadvantaged labour market participants obtain employment, help reduce poverty and income inequalities generated by the persistence of long-term unemployment, and they can raise overall productivity levels and living standards. What is at issue is not the need for LMP, but the type and mix of LMP required in Australia.

The government has embarked upon a substantially supply side orientated LMP aimed at improving the employment prospects of the unemployed. On the demand side this has been augmented by a private sector wage subsidy program (JOBSTART). Such a mix of LMP is inappropriate for addressing the labour market problems associated with a recession. The government should, as a matter of urgency, consider the immediate introduction of a public sector job creation scheme (PSJCS). The advantages of such a program include its potential to directly address the problem of long-term unemployment (LTU), assist disadvantaged communities and provide an effective work experience support for the plethora of supply side LMP. Such a program could be effectively delivered by utilising the existing administrative structures of the CES and local government.

Australia developed a strong and successful automotive manufacturing industry after the Second World War, based on active industrial policy. But in 2017, mass vehicle assembly in the country will cease altogether, as the last global automakers operating in the country close their final plants, with negative spillover effects along the automotive manufacturing supply chain. After 2017, Australia will be the only major industrial country with no vehicle assembly whatsoever. This article analyses the shifts in industrial policy that explain both the initial postwar expansion, and the subsequent decline and closures. Policy-makers incorrectly assumed that the critical goal of stimulating automotive exports could be achieved through trade liberalisation, but dismantling tariffs only stimulated vehicle imports without increasing overseas demand for Australian cars. Production declined in tandem with tariffs, and there was no clear industry policy strategy for facilitating the redirection of released resources to more productive manufacturing activity, when that outcome, predicted in neoliberal comparative advantage theory, failed to materialise. Financial market deregulation, resulting in financialisation of the economy, coupled with high commodity prices, resulted in an overvalued and volatile currency, attracting foreign investors to resources and asset speculation while appearing to increase manufacturing production costs. A clear contrast is drawn between Australia’s policy passivity in recent decades, and the continued policy activism visible in other jurisdictions of all political orientations – including countries which, particularly after the global financial crisis, faced economic and industrial challenges at least as daunting as Australia’s. In the 1970s, Australia had been among the world’s top 10 auto manufacturers; after 2017, it will be one of only two G20 countries completely lacking mass automotive manufacturing capacity. The industry’s disappearance from Australia is shown to have resulted from some unique policy choices: understanding them may help avert future similar policy errors.

This article examines the phenomenal growth of Korean cultural industries and their export to East Asia and other parts of the world. In the early years of industrialisation, culture was used by the authoritarian regime as a form of ideological support. Strict controls were exercised over cultural production and presentation. Controls were later relaxed as the regime used entertainment and sport as popular distractions. However, the increase in television ownership, the growth of domestic electronics and home appliance industries, and rising incomes (especially among the middle class) provided the material base for the growth of cultural industries following democratisation in the 1990s. Cultural industries became key drivers of economic growth, innovation and employment, and were strongly promoted and supported by government in the style of the developmental state. The result was burgeoning production and international trade across a wide spectrum of cultural industries – film, television drama, animation, video games and music. As a reflection of the increasing integration of Korea into world markets, the government also had to ensure compliance with international trade regulations and clamp down on piracy. Today, the Korean Wave of popular culture has reached consumers in all parts of the world and makes a significant contribution to Korean gross domestic product and exports.