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.

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.

There is a substantial body of research that recognises the importance of analysing regional characteristics in employment and labour relations that occur in a given geographical context. However, this phenomenon has been scarcely studied from a spatial approach. This article uses a spatio-temporal panel data model to examine the spatial interactions between the gender employment gap and, some labour and socioeconomic characteristics of 727 municipalities of Andalusia, Spain, for the period 2012–2016. The results show that due to spatial diffusion mechanisms, a spatial spillover effect occurs in both the gender gap in employment and in some of the labour and socioeconomic characteristics considered. These findings may be extended to other geographic areas and can be of use for the implementation of regional policies aimed at narrowing the gender employment gap.

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 spite of a growing body of literature on quasi-formal employment in the European Union (EU), there is still limited knowledge regarding the exact functioning of this illegal employment scheme. To fill this gap, we report data from the 2019 Special Eurobarometer on undeclared work, which reveals that 30.1% of European workers have higher income from employment than reported to tax authorities. Explicitly, 2.6% of registered dependent employees are entitled to cash top-ups to the official wage, for 7.8% of them the amount of supplementary payments depends on the work efforts, whereas 9.2% receive informal remuneration under multiple arrangements. In addition to these ‘regular recipients’, we also found that 10.5% of employees in the EU can be classified as ‘sporadic quasi-formal workers’. Besides showing that wage underreporting is far more pervasive than previously assumed, the study also offers a more nuanced insight into different manifestations of this illicit practice in the EU. Results of a two-level random intercept multinomial logit model reveal that women are less likely to receive fixed and variable cash-in-hand payments, whereas older individuals have a lower propensity to receive work-time-related income. The analysis also highlights that professionals, service sector employees, manual job workers and individuals whose jobs require travelling are more prone to variable wages compared to the rest of the population. Given a modest success in combating the phenomenon to this date, these findings will be particularly valuable for policymakers in their endeavours to devise tailored policy measures.

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 paper examines the evolution of monetary policy in Australia since the mid 1980s when financial markets were rapidly deregulated. The paper discusses the conduct of monetary policy within the framework of monetary targeting and how deregulation affected this framework. Alternative strategies for conducting monetary policy are discussed. However, it is argued that since 1985, monetary authorities have often changed the focus of monetary policy with no specific framework within which the policy is implemented.

Deregulation has forced interest rates to become the main focus of monetary policy. But, since the deregulation of financial markets, the transmission mechanism by which interest rates affect the economy, has changed significantly.

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 extended Review Article assesses the changing role of the corporation in history, using the 2018 book by Oxford scholar Colin Mayer entitled ‘Prosperity’ as a basis for the analysis. This is a traditional review article centred around the Mayer book, but as we end we take our argument, albeit tentatively, to other related issues, beyond the Mayer argument. The corporation may be viewed in a positive sense as a creator of wealth and ‘prosperity’ for society in general, or as in a negative sense as generating ‘prosperity’ only for the few, shareholders and executives at the expense of the many, including workers, customers and future generations. Colin Mayer’s book visits both sides of this ‘prosperity’ equation and the title of the book derives from this recognition. Our argument is that even within the limits of contemporary neo-liberal global capitalism, corporations could be a force for more sustainable and balanced economic growth, as well as for social and environmental good. This requires a clarification of its ‘purpose’ as well as changes in the composition of its decision-making structures and revised mandates of its boards and sub-committees such as its remuneration committees that often have been given the power alone to determine executive pay. But we argue (albeit only suggestively) in the final section that the nature and variety of capitalism itself may have to be addressed alongside firm level changes for the long-term good and sustainability of a more equal society. Mayer shows that since its birth in Roman times, as an agency for promoting public works and the public good, the corporation has taken on many different roles, with varying purpose. Only in the last 50 years has the Milton Friedman doctrine, that companies should have only one role, of maximizing shareholder wealth, become the dominant explanation for the purpose of the corporation. We are not confident that corporations will voluntarily move in these progressive directions, especially given the continuing stranglehold of neo-liberal globalization. A push for broader social and economic change from below through struggle may be essential.

Indigenous-owned businesses in Australia are strong employers of Indigenous people, maintaining rates of Indigenous employment that are not seen across the breadth of the Australian economy. Despite an increasing focus from governments and private organisations to improve rates of Indigenous employment, there is limited evidence to suggest that substantial improvements are being made. Despite acknowledgement from government of the crucial role played by Indigenous employers in creating Indigenous employment, there has been little focus on what may be learned from the Indigenous business sector in informing public and private Indigenous workplace and recruitment policies. Given the significantly strong levels of Indigenous employment in Indigenous-owned businesses, it is important to interrogate the extent to which this employment differs from that in non-Indigenous businesses and the potential explanations for such divergence. Using data from Supply Nation (2,291 Indigenous-owned businesses) and a survey of 680 non-Indigenous businesses, this paper finds that Indigenous businesses employ Indigenous people at a rate 12 times higher than non-Indigenous businesses. Regression analyses and Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions reveal that these divergent employment outcomes cannot be explained by the broad characteristics of the two sectors (such as industry, location, or profit status). These findings help confirm that the unique workplace practices of Indigenous businesses may explain their strong Indigenous employment and, therefore, provide the template for all Australian businesses to be better employers of Indigenous people.