The part played by unemployment in the rise to power of Hitler weighed on the minds of leaders in Western democracies. There was a determination to create a world in which large-scale unemployment was abnormal and at worst only a temporary phenomenon. The war had shown that this was possible in a community united to pursue a common goal and the aim was to create such a community in a world free from the horrors of war, by creating communities in which the welfare of every person was important. Australia was remarkably successful in achieving this for 30 years. Its success depended on governments responding to any sustained increase in unemployment by undertaking large increases in public sector expenditure supported by accommodating monetary policy and tax cuts if desirable. In bad times as well as good, there was a determination to ensure that both the incomes and prices paid for necessities by the less well-off did not force anyone to live in poverty. The biggest obstacle to achieving this today is the growth of neoliberalism with its emphasis on ‘freedom’ or giving individuals the ability to act as they please with minimal constraints and an ideological commitment to small government.

This paper evaluates the impacts of 2017’s labour law liberalisation on labour market flexibility in Lithuania. While employment did grow rapidly in 2017–2019, there was little change in labour market flexibility. Against expectations, part-time employment declined as labour relations continued to be administered under path-dependent institutional inertia inherited from previous decades. The prevalence of full-time, dual-earner employment was shaped by the country’s socialist legacy and was reflected in high employment rates and permanent open-ended contracts for both men and women. Analysis also showed that the revised labour law lowered the probability for women with family care responsibilities to be hired. Once hired, they were offered permanent employment albeit with the reduced protections that such contracts now provide. Impacts of the new labour law on shaping what is considered to be ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’ in Lithuania are discussed.

Although collective bargaining is essentially a communication process, the role of language (as distinguished from discourse) in bargaining exchanges has received little attention from industrial relations scholars. Building on the work of Karl Popper, this article proposes a decomposition of language into functions and values and analyses their relevance when parties to a collective bargaining encounter engage in an integrative process. The proposed framework provides labour negotiators seeking integrative outcomes with linguistic guidelines and scholars with a tool to analyse bargaining exchanges.

The gender pay gap, the difference in earnings of men and women, has remained remarkably resilient over the past two decades in Australia and a number of other countries, despite a range of legislative and policy initiatives aimed at narrowing this difference. Drawing upon industry-wide data and an organisational case, this analysis of professional business services examines the nature of pay equity within and beyond organisational boundaries. We conclude that ‘success’ in gender and pay equity terms has been constrained by minimum government compliance requirements and limited attention to the role labour markets play in contributing to gendered patterns of pay.

This paper presents the results of research, which highlights the situation during the pandemic in sectors characterised by low wages and a high turnover of workers. The empirical basis is formed by company case studies in the meat industry, postal services, and mask production in Germany and Austria. This paper discusses the significance of different locations (at and beyond the workplace) and forms (‘exit’ and ‘voice’) of labour unrest in sectors of the economy that are characterised by a predominance of the use of migrant labour. It questions how conflicts over migrant labour have been articulated and possibly changed in the pandemic, and what factors may have contributed not only to an upsurge but also to the containment, regulation, and repression, of labour unrest.

In an earlier issue of this Journal the Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations outlined the Coalition’s industrial relations policy. A major ingredient of that policy is the provision of voluntary industrial agreements. This article reviews the constitutional heads of power under which any future Coalition government may seek to legislate for voluntary industrial agreements. It suggests that they could be major impediments to such legislation.

In this paper we argue that Australia’s current economic problems are not just the result of our being at the bottom of the cycle, but rather reflect a longer term decline. The reasons for this decline are located in structural problems relating to the decline of the industrial sector and the increasing unreliability of the export sector. We view industry as the core sector which generates technology and growth. Within the industrial sector, capital goods producing industries are the ‘hot bed’ (so to speak) of structure change and technical progress. Australia has let these industries decline. As a result, traditional remedies in the form of either demand management policies or ‘waiting for the world recovery’ will not be enough. In fact, recent economic policies, rather than being a panacea, have exacerbated the problem.

This essay is a review of and tribute to the life and contributions of Nina Shapiro, who passed away this year. Shapiro was an American Post-Keynesian economist, who was a bridge figure in radical economics, connecting Marx to Keynes, Schumpeter to Kaldor, the behavior of the firm to the dynamics of the macroeconomy, and the process of innovation to the organization of production and accumulation. She was seminal to important moments in the history of radical economics in the US, including the formation of the Hegel-inspired journal Social Concept in the 1980s and the Rutgers University’s Post-Keynesian circle in the 1980s and 1990s. Shapiro’s deeply philosophical and dialectical approach to firm behavior, innovation, and business cycles led her to theorize the “revolutionary character” of Post-Keynesian economics and to formulate a critique of the competitive neoclassical firm which, she argued, is at odds with the logic of capitalism in which firms seek to make profit and grow.

Global financial crises and potential sovereign defaults provide an opportunity for financial regulators and analysts to revise assumptions in their risk models. These conditions are also an opportunity for regulators and analysts to distinguish the ‘hyper-real’ economy, represented by derivatives, from the real economy, which requires assessment through an analysis of human as well as financial capital. Regulators are required to demonstrate that they are skilled in conducting the most thorough analysis of all elements of the finance system in order to help the investing public to manage risk as much as possible. The contribution of this article is to overview the limitations inherent in regulators’ traditional focus on financial analysis, as well as in financial analysts’ failure to consider the relevance of people management data when evaluating the potential performance of knowledge-intensive, service-based organisations. The article argues for a stronger focus on analysis of non-financial capital, including human capital, to provide a more effective ‘early warning’ of potential financial distress.

Since the late eighties, a new model of public sector employment has swept a number of the States in Australia, initially at the senior executive level and now increasingly at non-executive level. This model of ‘contract’ employment is one in which employees may be terminated at short notice, for no reason, and with very limited termination compensation. This paper analyses the consequences of this new model and, specifically, of dramatically increased exposure to the risk of arbitrary termination or termination flowing from the impact of an ‘exogenous’ financial or policy shock upon Government. It also reflects on the prospects for the construction of a new ‘implicit contract’ which might mitigate the adverse consequences of the new model by facilitating the re-establishment of trust in the public sector employment relationship.

The use of part-time jobs is steadily increasing in most advanced economies. Previous literature has concluded that part-time workers suffer a wage penalty, but its magnitude varies across studies and countries. The part-time penalty is the otherwise unexplained element of the gap between full-time and part-time hourly earnings. One potential factor accounting for international differences in this penalty is the coverage of collective bargaining. This article outlines research examining wage differences between part-time and full-time male and female workers in Spain, a country with a very high level of coverage of collective agreements but very heterogeneous regional labour markets. Results are obtained using an econometric decomposition specifically adapted to matched employer–employee data. They show that intra-firm wage differentials for part- and full-time workers with the same characteristics are negligible. But results that are perhaps less expected are those based on the regional analysis – an unprecedented perspective compared with the previous literature. These results show that despite very significant differences in economies and labour markets, observed wage gaps between part-time and full-time workers in each Spanish region are also mainly explained by different endowments of individual, job and firm characteristics. Overall, our evidence highlights the over-riding role of wage setting mechanisms, specifically collective bargaining coverage, in minimising inter-regional differences in the wage penalty of part-time workers.

This article critically examines the relation between work and utility and challenges the mainstream economic view of well-being as a hedonic state for which work is a less pleasurable trade-off. It proposes a conception of work as a potential source of eudaimonic well-being, providing meaning and contributing to human flourishing and self-realisation. Based on micro-level data, the article shows the relevance of distinguishing between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being by way of comparing the effects of increased financial difficulties and deteriorated work conditions on these two types of well-being in five European Union countries – Germany, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK – in the post global financial crisis years between 2009 and 2014. The article concludes by underlining the political importance of addressing aspects pertaining to the quality of working life and of creating jobs that serve to improve the eudaimonic well-being of citizens.

In 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.