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.

This article highlights and assesses orthodox responses to three crucial questions in political economy, namely: the role of human capital in the process of economic development, how this role transforms during a period of resource abundance and what is the place of education in empowering labour to reclaim or transform surplus value. Drawing on recent evidence collected from Ghana, a new and young oil economy, it proposes different responses to all these questions which imply the need to replace the concept of ‘human capital’ with ‘human development’ and to move from theoretical to substantivist analysis of oil, education and labour relations.

The pros and cons of part-time work have attracted considerable attention in recent years, not least because of its presumed potential to enable employees to reconcile paid work and family needs. This article focuses on job-sharing, which is a unique yet underexplored form of part-time work and one which has rarely been analysed in terms of the consequences for all stakeholders. This case study of job-sharing details its positive outcomes for some employees, in assisting them to balance career and family. The study also highlights some previously unexplored and, we argue, unintended negative consequences of job-sharing. In this case, job-sharing contributed to the increased use of temporary employees who were locked out of many of the benefits of quality flexible work. Furthermore, the case study reveals competing interests between permanent and temporary employees, creating a range of challenges for human resource practitioners in managing and developing both groups.

Networks are a subject of growing research interest. Yet union networks, particularly networks of delegates, and ways to build them, are still poorly understood. This is a study of the meaning that workplace union delegates assign to networks of support. It explores the characteristics of effective delegate and union networks and influences upon them. Effective networks are a combination of strong and weak ties, such that delegates sometimes do not recognise they are part of a network. Our three-stage research methodology involved delegate focus groups, a paper-based self-completion questionnaire of recently trained delegates (N=473) and a follow-up telephone survey (N=145). It found that organisers were key to creation of internal workplace networks (although they did not necessarily establish them) and in providing a bridge for delegates with external networks. They were the key support person for many delegates. Networks took a variety of forms. Only a minority were formalised. A majority were mainly internal to the workplace. Social media were rarely used, with little intention of using them more, and were, we suspect, underutilised.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, unemployment rates and openness to trade have been the subject of considerable research, especially in developing countries. This study analyses the impacts of trade policy on unemployment rates in Nigeria. Using time series data from 1970 to 2010, it adopts the vector error correction methodology. In order to explore the impact of a range of variables on the relationship between trade openness and national unemployment rates, these variables, in a system of equations, include measures of trade openness, public recurrent spending on education, foreign price shocks and real gross domestic product or alternatively income per capita. The findings reveal that in the long run, real output and income per capita lead to a decline in unemployment, but trade openness policy is associated with an increase in unemployment. Foreign policy shocks, as proxied by commodity prices, also exert a positive effect on unemployment rates and do not contribute subsequently to restoring the system to equilibrium. However, the initial impact of openness and foreign price shocks captured by short-term dynamics are observed to reduce unemployment.

Changes to the Australian regulatory landscape over the past three decades of global liberalisation created regulatory uncertainty for unions. Coupled with membership decline and internal restructuring through union amalgamations, they prompted an important reorientation by unions (back) to the workplace, and precipitated different strategic decisions and organising challenges. However, the proliferation of fragmented employment relationships rendered workplace-centred organising an insufficient response. As a result, some unions experimented with ways of supplementing existing legal frameworks by other regulatory initiatives, through campaigns that resulted in the layering of regulation. In this article, we examine attempts by three unions – covering garment workers, road transport workers and aged care workers – to address the needs of members in garment homeworking, road transport and aged care in a contested regulatory environment.

There exists a gap at the intersection of Australia’s immigration and employment laws that has serious implications for employees, employers and policy. Australia is host to a large and growing population of immigrants working without authorisation, described as the most significant problem facing Australian immigration authorities. These undocumented workers are often exploited by employers through wage theft, sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions. Yet, they are not entitled to protection under Australia’s employment laws. In addition to the implications for workers, there are broader policy concerns arising from the current system of regulation that effectively rewards employers who are equally in breach of immigration law. Left uncorrected, current regulation may in fact be encouraging a ‘race to the bottom’ for employment standards and increasing undocumented immigrant work. As well as highlighting the inadequacy of the existing regulatory framework, potential avenues for addressing this are explored.

Contributing to the broader topic of minimum wage determination in developing countries, this article discusses the shaping and implementation of minimum wage policy in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It begins by outlining the institutional arrangements under which minimum wage rates are determined in PNG. It then critically examines the argument that wage levels in the country are unsustainably high – a claim that has perennially characterised Papua New Guinea (PNG) minimum wage fixing. The article argues that, on the contrary, wage levels are indeed low and not adequate to reasonably support a single worker, let alone a family in an urban setting. This counter-argument is discussed in the context of debates over minimum wage levels and their relationship to economic growth, employment creation, international competitiveness, and capacity to pay. Whilst focusing on the PNG wage fixing system, the article thus sheds light on the dilemmas and challenges facing wages policy generally in a developing country setting.

Research about the demand for Indigenous labour and the relationship of Indigenous workers to their employers is relatively scarce. Even less is known about Indigenous businesses. Supply Nation defines an Indigenous business as those where Indigenous stakeholders hold majority equity, but some researchers have argued that this definition could be relaxed to include businesses in which Indigenous people hold only half the equity in the enterprise. This article uses data from the Industry Capability Network Queensland, which has collected basic business information on a large number of businesses operating in Queensland. The findings reveal that Indigenous businesses have substantially better outcomes for Indigenous employment than non-Indigenous businesses – a result that holds even when the definition of Indigenous business is relaxed. The article also documents how Indigenous employment is concentrated in larger businesses, in particular industry sectors. Non-Indigenous micro-businesses employ relatively few Indigenous workers, and future research can usefully explore why this is the case. To understand the issues involved, it will be necessary to collect multi-level data that link detailed information on employers and employees (including a substantial sample of Indigenous workers).

The article considers the place of Working Holiday visas in Australia’s migration policy and socio-economic planning. With the number of Working Holiday visa grants now topping 200,000 annually, Working Holiday Makers are significant participants in low-skilled work in Australia. The article argues that the programme is not adequately regulated to protect Working Holiday Makers in this work. In light of concerns around the exploitation of Working Holiday Makers, the article offers suggestions for reform to the programme. The article argues that the programme should be returned to its original conception of fostering a cultural experience for young migrants coming to Australia. It argues that work entitlements under the Working Holiday visa should be limited to work that is appropriate for young migrants on a brief cultural visit and that labour shortages should otherwise be filled using dedicated temporary labour migration visas which are properly designed to address labour shortages in the economy. Reform is necessary to protect the work conditions of local and migrant workers, to maintain Australia’s reputation as a country with high employment standards and to maintain positive relations with countries in the Working Holiday programme.

The ‘microfoundations’ metaphor had been used by mainstream macroeconomists with the intention of explaining macroeconomics in terms of microeconomics, or more precisely in terms of statements about individuals, viewed as representative agents with rational expectations who maximise lifetime utility, subject to shocks within a general equilibrium framework. Of the three reasons for rejecting this explanatory strategy, the focus here is on downward causation. Although individuals are heavily influenced by society, their decisions and behaviour are not sufficient as the explanatory foundations for a macrotheory.

Behavioural economics research has pointed to the importance of market inefficiencies, framing, heuristics and hyperbolic discounting. Empirically, behavioural economics has been shown to predict patterns of consumer behaviour, exercise patterns and substance addiction. In this article, I discuss the ways in which our growing understanding of behavioural economics has shaped the development of public policies. I conclude with six pieces of advice for behavioural policymakers.

This article argues for domestic legislative regulation of global value chains to protect offshore workers. First, it outlines the policy reasons necessitating such legislation. Empirical evidence confirms that global value chains are a dominant feature of the global economy. It is contended that lead firms wield influence in global value chains in a manner which leads to poor outcomes for offshore workers. Second, the article sets out the minimum steps necessary for a domestic state to attribute the responsibility for transparency of global value chains to lead firms. Then, it proceeds to explore the possibilities and limits of the proposed scheme of regulation. Despite some complexities with implementing the scheme, it is argued that if domestic legislative regulation of global value chains strengthens even to a small extent the monitoring of global labour issues, it is worth pursuing.