Globally, fisheries and forestry have been characterised by substantial ecological and economic problems. Both sectors have become notorious for depleting the stocks on which they depend, eroding the value of harvested natural resources over time and having significant negative ‘by-catch’ impacts on non-target natural resources. Problems of resource overuse and potential ecosystem collapse inherently derive from poor decisions influenced by those with undue or excessive economic, political and labour market power. Solutions to problems of unsustainability of resource management will need to engage with these economic drivers and beneficiaries, and require strategies including better and more independent assessments of the status and condition of resources. Deep-seated problems caused by resource over-commitment need more robust approaches to resource assessment that (1) better account for uncertainty (including uncertainty resulting from stock losses due to disturbance), (2) avoid ratchet effects and (3) provide appropriate ecological parameters for resource harvest. The United Nations framework for environmental and economic accounting methods can help assess the economic and other contributions of different resource-based industries and inform decisions about trade-offs between competing interests. Finally, there is value in examining successful and unsuccessful industry restructuring, in which decisions to transition away from demonstrably unsustainable resource industries have been made.

It has long been accepted that the adequacy of payments is a key objective of any social security system, where adequacy is defined as the ability of a payment to support a basic acceptable standard of living that is consistent with prevailing community standards. The 2009 Harmer Pension Review directed attention to the adequacy of the pension, an issue that has not been systematically examined in Australia for several decades. This article reviews alternative definitions of adequacy and shows that its basic features have been consistently recognised in official reports conducted over a long period. The deprivation approach is then described and shown to produce estimates that have a direct bearing on this conception of income adequacy. Using the results from two recent surveys, conducted in 2006 and 2010, the article compares levels of deprivation among groups defined on the basis of their principal source of income, including those dependent on an Age Pension and several other forms of social security payment. The results indicate that the adequacy of the Age Pension in 2006 was above that of payments awarded on the basis of disability, unemployment or sole parenthood, and also that the pension increase awarded following the Pension Review reduced deprivation among those who received it. However, the increase was not well targeted to those groups who required further assistance, as indicated by the levels of deprivation they were facing. Further application of the deprivation approach would provide new insights into the nature and extent of existing income inadequacies.

Although the positive socio-economic effects of remittances for recipient countries in the short term are unmistakable, inflows of remittances may at the same time exert adverse effects on the trade competitiveness of an economy, by appreciating the real exchange rate. This phenomenon is characterised as an instance of the ‘Dutch disease’ – the negative impact of windfall revenue inflows on the competitiveness of other tradable sectors and hence on overall economic growth. While the real effect of workers’ remittances on real exchange rates in a recipient economy is still a controversial issue, several studies have analysed evidence for the existence of the ‘Dutch disease’ phenomenon in various sets of countries. The main objective of this study is to examine whether remittance flows have had any adverse effect on the international trade competitiveness of a selected group of developing countries during the period from 1995 to 2014. Using a one-step system Generalised Method of Moments specification within a simultaneous equation approach, it shows that remittance flows depreciate the real exchange rate at their levels and that the lagged value of remittances create the Dutch disease for this country group. In addition, we confirm that while trade openness and world real interest rates contribute to a depreciation in real exchange rates, gross domestic product per capita and net Official Development Aid inflows tend to appreciate real exchange rates. A policy implication is that trade liberalisation policies that lower tariff rates on capital imports and new export-oriented incentive programmes should be accompanied by measures designed to prevent appreciation in the real exchange rate: steps in this direction such as recent macroeconomic and prudential capital flow management initiatives are briefly referenced.

This introduction overviews four approaches to theoretical and empirical research on the ‘gig’ economy, framing them within the concept of the ‘fissuring of the workplace’. It outlines arguments that ‘gig’ or digital work is not a new phenomenon but a resurgence of older, unregulated labour extraction methods and outlines the need for a more nuanced way of measuring the dimensions of job insecurity and their corrosive effects. In foreshadowing potential policy approaches to addressing the regulatory deficit surrounding gig economy work, it argues for an eclectic approach to using and strengthening legislation designed to safeguard the rights of consumers and providers of services, including contractors, and regardless of employment status. Finally, it foreshadows a study of how a successful union movement respond to the gig economy – negotiation with a digital platform to bring advertised hourly pay rates into line with the minima set within the industrial relations system for employment in the relevant industries.

While traditional labour market estimates indicate that there has been little change in the proportion of workers holding multiple jobs in North America, survey instrument deficiencies may be hiding more substantial growth driven by the gig economy. To address this possibility, I test a broader measure of multiple jobholding to examine its prevalence in the Canadian workforce based on two national studies of workers (2011 Canadian Work Stress and Health Study and 2019 Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study). Almost 20% of workers in 2019 reported multiple jobholding – a rate that is three times higher than Statistics Canada estimates. While multivariate analyses reveal that the multiple jobholding rate in 2019 was 30% higher than in the 2011 Canadian Work Stress and Health Study, multiple jobholders in 2019 were less likely to report longer work hours in secondary employment. Analyses also revealed that having financial difficulties is consistently associated with multiple jobholding in 2011 and 2019. Collectively, these findings suggest that while the spread of short-term work arrangements has facilitated Canadians’ secondary employment decisions, for many workers these decisions may reflect underlying problems in the quality of primary employment in Canada, rather than labour market opportunity. I discuss the potential links between multiple jobholding, the gig economy and employment precariousness.

Contracting out publicly funded vocational education and training (VET) in Australia to private providers has been accompanied by persistent concern at decline in the quality of training. Using transaction cost economics, this outcome is ascribed to the characteristics of publicly funded VET as a commodity and the conditions under which it is privately produced and consumed. The article concludes that, in general, publicly funded VET does not meet the minimum conditions for efficient contracting out. The economic and social consequences of inadequate quality VET provision are potentially severe.

Most studies of the role of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) have argued that the peak-council has traditionally had little if any authority over its affiliates. This paper contends that this situation changed during the 1980s and that the ACTU achieved a significant degree of internal union authority. Examples of such authority are documented and the combination of external factors, such as the political and economic environment, and internal factors, such as leadership and reduced factionalism, that contributed to this growth of authority are analysed.

Individual managers may make judgements and decisions which reflect social expectations rather than organisational policy. Society generally requires that individuals with an illness take leave from their work, seek medical assistance and return when they are well. This is not possible for individuals with chronic illness. By its nature, chronic illness has no cure. Individuals who are diagnosed with diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes or inflammatory bowel disease and who also undertake paid employment may need to disclose their illness and seek some form of accommodation in their workplace. Understanding attitudes of managers plays a significant role in the success of managing work and chronic illness. This article examines the working experiences of women with chronic illness where the attitudes of managers were less understanding.

Non-standard patterns of paid work are increasing in Australia, and young people are among the most affected. To investigate the impact of non-standard work schedules on young people’s relationships, this article draws on data from 50 interviews conducted in 2008 and 4 surveys conducted between 2007 and 2012 with 636 young people (aged 18–24 years), all participating in the Life Patterns Project longitudinal study of youth in Australia. Over the 6 years, a majority of participants were engaged in non-standard work, working weekends, evenings or public holidays. A significant minority also faced weekly variability in their work schedules. The interview data suggest that these patterns of employment can be considered unsocial, making it more difficult to find regular periods of time together with a group of friends. Interview discussion also suggests that as a substitute for a greater quantity of shared time, some young people seek out shared experiences felt to be intense or out of the ordinary, such as that facilitated by alcohol consumption, to make the most of limited opportunities to bond with a group of close friends.

A number of recent inquiries into Australia’s national training system have found it to be on the sick side. This article seeks the causes of this in the recent evolution of training policy, which commenced in the late 1980s. The article traces the demise of the first moderately interventionist National Training Reform Agenda, which union reformers played a role in shaping, through the increasing marketisation of training policy. Under the Liberal National Coalition, budget constraints and the short term interests of employers have increasingly driven training policy. The drift of policy is against the grain of prescriptions drawn from the international literature, which shows the need for interventionist measures to correct ‘market failure’, and to ensure adequate expenditure and the integrity of qualifications.

Traditionally, older people have been the key targets of Australia’s targeted welfare state. Flat rate pensions and widespread home ownership have ensured relative equality in older life. However, in response to perceived fiscal pressures generated by population ageing, Australia has increasingly shifted its policy settings, encouraging private savings over public risk pooling. Private savings are increasingly supported by public subsidy through tax policy. This has led to overlapping policy priorities, as public subsidies are used both as incentives to promote savings and as social policy instruments to promote adequate living standards in retirement. This conflict is evident in recent policy reviews of taxation, public spending and pension policy. This article explores the development of this conflict and how it manifests in proposals for reform. We argue that the conflation of welfare and taxation goals increasingly creates a dual welfare state that promotes private provision at the expense of both equity and efficiency. We suggest that more explicit identification of the roles of tax policy, and the welfare implications of tax changes, would help to improve policy design.

As in many other countries, the eighties have seen the re-emergence of poverty as a political issue in Australia. Rising unemployment and the increased incidence of sole parenthood have put more children at risk of poverty, a development which has prompted increased policy concern. This paper presents estimates of the incidence and structure of poverty in Australia in 1981–82, 1985–86 and 1989–90, using the poverty standard developed by the Poverty Commission in the seventies. The estimates for 1989–90 are based on data generated from the 1986 Income Distribution Survey by a microsimulation model that allows for trends in demographic change, labour market participation and income during the second half of the eighties. The results indicate that the overall poverty rate has increased from 9.2 per cent in 1981–82 to 12.8 per cent in 1989–90. This is despite the fact that the incomes of many low income groups have increased in real terms, in many cases substantially. The reason for this apparent paradox is that the poverty standard is a relative one, and has thus itself been increased in line with average community incomes. One of the conclusions of the paper is that it may be necessary to reconsider the use of a relative poverty standard when assessing short-run trends in the extent of poverty.

Australia has one of the most ‘liberalised’ electricity sectors in the world. The sale of government-owned electricity companies has contributed to that liberalisation and a quarter of the proceeds of one of the world’s largest privatisation programmes. In 2014, the state governments of New South Wales and Queensland announced further electricity privatisations if re-elected. Advocates claim private ownership will mean more productive investment, lower costs leading to more efficient operations, lower prices for all consumers and better market functioning without government interference. Opponents contend that the true value of government businesses is not being realised at sale, retention can achieve returns greater than those from a sale, and that follow sale, prices will rise and jobs will be lost. This article demonstrates that the claims of either lower or higher prices, of job losses and of more efficient operations are tantamount to being myths of privatisation not borne out by reality.

Financialisation and financial risk have become current buzzwords, but the connections between finance and labour are not well developed. Often labour is cast simply as the distributional victim of developments like shareholder value, the privatisation of public infrastructure and labour market reform. This article engages developments in the construction industry and locates a growing financial logic inside ‘production’ and work in that sector. Through the concepts of liquidity and risk, we identify causal connections, not just parallels, between financial innovation and the reorganisation of the logic and structure of work in the Australian construction and property services industry.

Neoliberal policies of industrial relations decentralisation and privatisation have transformed the economic landscape of Australia in the last 20 years. The primary objective of these policies has been to enhance wealth and prosperity by improving productivity and flexibility of the workforce and competition and accountability in the market. Yet the evidence suggests that precarious workers are not benefiting from this increased prosperity, indeed they suffer by comparison with all other workers. Cleaners are a subset of precarious workers who have been hard hit by the dual impacts of labour market decentralisation and privatisation. This study finds quantitative evidence of an increasing gap in earnings between cleaners and other workers in Australia since the onset of workplace relations decentralisation and the proliferation of privatisation in the mid 1990s. We locate our argument in recent debates about the nature of variegated neoliberalism, the emergence of the networked economy, and the implications of these developments for the nature of work and employment.

This article explores the relationship between precarious employment and seafarers’ control over the scheduling and location of their work, and considers the implications of this relationship for their occupational health and safety. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 permanently and 17 precariously employed seafarers. In contrast with those on permanent contracts, seafarers employed by crewing agencies on temporary contracts were deployed at short notice and commenced work on vessels irrespective of whether they had experienced an adequate rest period at home. Such precariously employed seafarers were also deployed across the various sectors of the industry on unfamiliar vessels. Seafarers felt strongly that scheduling and location uncertainties were closely linked with increased risks to their safety and well-being, and it was clear that these areas of uncertainty were frequently experienced in combination, in particular, by those with precarious employment arrangements. The article, therefore, suggests that the widespread disorganisation of the employment relationship increases the occupational health and safety risks faced by those working in an already dangerous industry. It concludes that this lack of commitment by shipping companies to their workforce means that, for many seafarers, protection against these additional risks is effectively at the discretion of the captain on board.

Most proposed solutions in the Global Green New Deal literature involve finance and technology transfers to address the imbalance between the Global North and Global South, while providing little discussion of the internal socioeconomic structures within countries in the Global South. This article uses China as a case study to show that without addressing the issue of domestic informality, the potential benefits of a Global Green New Deal are less likely to be fully realised in the Global South. We use the Input-Output method and our originally constructed data on formal and informal employment to calculate the informal employment share in two exemplary renewable energy sectors: solar and wind. We find that more than half of the jobs created in the solar and wind energy sectors, with a given level of spending, will be in the informal economy, and hence are associated with low wages and little social welfare protection. The results imply that, without addressing informality, both renewable energy sectors perpetuate the informal structure in the broader economy. We also question the capitalist nature of ‘green jobs’ created by the Green New Deal. Based on the results, we call for a more organic integration of a Global South perspective in the studies of a Global Green New Deal.

This article maps the major changes taking place in academic work within the broader context of the neoliberalisation of universities. Recognising the great variability in the form and pace of neoliberalisation across institutions and national contexts, the article identifies a set of features and indicators to aid in the comparative assessment of the extent and effect of neoliberal processes at different institutions. The authors use conceptual tools from labour process theory to highlight the ways that neoliberalisation has resulted in academic work that is fragmented, deskilled, intensified, and made subject to greater levels of surveillance, hierarchy, and precarity. In doing so, the authors also demonstrate the importance of combining political economy and Foucauldian approaches to neoliberalism, to highlight the way that external structural conditions and subjective processes combine to create new labour processes to which participants find themselves consenting and actively reproducing.

Many governments across the world provide extensive funding to national sports teams and individual athletes in pursuit of success at international competitions such as the Olympic Games. One factor that motivates governments to fund national sports teams is the potential to exploit the elevation in nationalistic pride that attends international sporting success. Drawing on research in the psychology of sport, this article contends that politicians can access the ‘reflective glow’ of successful athletes for their political benefit. The statistical correlation between government funding and Olympic success is explored using the basic prisoners’ dilemma to represent the decisions of two governments competing for sports success. While the analysis is simple, we argue that it sheds some light on recent examples and represents a first step in understanding this complex issue.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is an institution, a set of programmes and policies designed to mark a number of important reforms not just in the post-Soviet space but in the wider European political economy. It is committed to developing a competitive business environment, foreign investment and private sector activity in the post-communist space. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is considered to be a key inter-state mechanism enabling member states to negotiate post-communist reforms. The paper reorients analysis of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, claiming that existing framings of the role of the EBRD ignore its tangible neoliberalising pressures. It argues that the EBRD works to fundamentally restructure states in the post-communist space in three ways: (1) the configuration of an ‘appropriately’ neoliberal economic space, (2) the construction of subaltern subjectivities in the regional space, and (3) the persistent dominance of expert knowledge and policy practice external to the state. This restructuring is intended to further neoliberalism in the economic space of the region. By uncoupling the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from a state centric analysis, the paper reveals how the technical aspects of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development activities configure particular neoliberal rationalities and competencies not as a putative superstate, but as a key site for the ever-deeper encroachment of neoliberalisation in peripheral European states.