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.

Financialisation is now an emerging field of research. Recently, the field has attracted criticism for its focus on large-scale economic processes, such as profit accumulation based not on production, but on a diversification of financial risk management tools – a focus which ignores the way in which individuals and households experience financialisation in everyday life. In addressing this gap, theorists have sought to understand financialisation as it relates to individuals as consumers and investors, increasing their need to integrate financial calculation into daily life. This article takes the analysis two steps further. First, it argues that precarious work is actually an aspect of financialisation, based on risk-shifting by employing organisations – a process of structural change in the labour market that actually undermines individual workers’ capacity to manage financial risk successfully. Second, it argues that financialisation is an ideology or narrative of individual responsibility, which seeks to legitimate structural change by promising emancipation through individual calculation. It draws on interviews with precarious workers to explore the gap between such norms of financial self-determination and the lived experience of insecure employment. It identifies this paradox of precariousness by focusing on people in professional occupations, who in theory are best placed to successfully negotiate economic change.

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.

Marketised models of social care provision in Australia are placing pressures on service providers and driving changes in work organisation and employer practices, with potential to degrade social care jobs. While international experience of marketised social care has demonstrated the vulnerability of social care workers to wage theft and other violations of employment laws, Australia’s relatively strong industrial relations safety net might be expected to be better able to protect these low-paid workers. Nevertheless, there is emerging evidence of negative impacts on the pay and entitlements of frontline workers in the expanding community support and homecare workforce. This study investigates the paid and unpaid work time of disability support workers under Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme. The research takes a novel approach combining analysis of working day diaries and qualitative interviews with employees to expose how jobs are being fragmented and work is being organised into periods of paid and unpaid time, leaving employees paid below their minimum entitlement. The article highlights the role of social care policy along with inadequate employment regulation.

We introduce a themed collection of articles examining how the public sector has responded to, and been impacted by, the COVID-19 crisis. Although the pandemic has affected the roles, functions, economies, governance and structures of public sectors, this themed collection focuses on public sector employment relations. Authors examine significant areas which have been subject to accelerated change stemming from the pandemic. Building on decades of public sector reform, these changes impact public sector enterprise bargaining, terms and conditions of employment, working arrangements and practices, and the relationship between public servants and their employer. The articles in this collection provide important insights into the longer-term influences of the COVID-19 pandemic for public sector workforces. The collection also raises questions around whether the positive lessons from this crisis can be sustained to help manage serious crises in the future, or whether the public sector will slip back into a state of unpreparedness.

Although a Labor government fiscal stimulus had helped Australia weather the 2008 global financial crisis, budget deficits increased, and the public service was targeted for economies. The Liberal/National (Coalition) opposition won office in 2013, promising public sector cuts. In this context, the Walton et al. concept of a forcing strategy helps analyse the 2014–2016 bargaining round in the Australian Public Service. A forcing strategy involves three negotiating processes: distributive bargaining to achieve concessions in pay and working conditions, the structuring of attitudes to heighten animosity between the negotiating parties, and the management of internal differences to minimise intragroup conflicts. The Liberal/National (Coalition) government adopted elements of these approaches, requiring Australian Public Service agencies to reduce a range of employment conditions to justify pay increases. Interactions between Australian Public Service management and the principal Australian Public Service trade union, the Community and Public Sector Union became increasingly hostile over the course of the bargaining round. In addition, internal differences emerged between the Australian Public Service Commission, which oversaw the bargaining process, and individual Australian Public Service agencies. We consider the efficacy of this forcing strategy in light of the potential for the Community and Public Sector Union to mobilise its membership to resist such an approach to pay negotiations.

Empirical studies in economics traditionally use a limited range of methods, usually based on particular types of regression analysis. Increasingly, sophisticated regression techniques require the availability of appropriate data sets, often longitudinal and typically collected at a national level. This raises challenges for researchers seeking to investigate issues requiring data that are not typically included in regular large-scale data. It also raises questions of the adequacy of relying mainly or solely on regression analysis for investigating key issues of economic theory and policy. One way of addressing these issues is to employ a mixed-methods research framework to investigate important research questions. In this article, we provide an example of applying a mixed-methods design to investigate the employment decisions of mature age women working in the aged care sector. We outline the use of a coherent and robust framework to allow the integrated collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. Drawing on particular examples from our analysis, we show how a mixed-methods approach facilitates richer insights, more finely grained understandings of causal relationships and identification of emergent issues. We conclude that mixed-methods research has the capacity to provide surprises and generate new insights through detailed exploratory data analysis.

This article considers a range of legal issues that arise when family and domestic violence impacts upon the workplace. It examines the available data on the costs of family and domestic violence to employers and the community. It discusses the potential for employers to be affected by Australian State and Territory criminal and related laws that are intended to protect a person from family and domestic violence. Recent cases of discrimination arising from family and domestic violence are considered with some speculations as to other possible forms of liability for employers concerning work health and safety and workers compensation laws. The Australian Fair Work Commission’s determination of unpaid family domestic violence leave is also examined, as is the adoption of paid leave by some State and Territory governments and larger Australian employers. The article concludes with some reflections and speculations on how current laws may affect employers and what actions can be taken by employers to adopt supportive measures to protect employees.

This paper examines the privatisation of Sydney Airport and the regime of ‘light-handed’ monitoring of service quality and airport charges that followed the sale in 2002. The arguments for privatisation are reviewed, in particular the need for increased competition and/or appropriate regulation where a former public monopoly, such as Sydney Airport, is sold. The aftermath of the privatisation of the airport has led to complaints by the major airlines and consumers of ever increasing charges for use of the airfield and for car parking and other services. This highlights that the ‘light-handed’ monitoring regime has not constrained the airport’s ability to charge monopoly rents. The aftermath of privatisation has resulted in labour shedding, outsourcing and a focus on cost minimisation by the airport’s management.

Irresponsible lending practices on the part of financial institutions and proliferation of tradable derivatives were key causal agents of the 2008 financial crisis. However, it is less clear why, historically, loose credit arrangements were so widespread. Somewhat misleadingly, much conjecture has laid blame at the feet of financial institutions themselves. While it is true that duplicitous and even corrupt lending practices were consequential antecedents of the crisis, a legacy commitment to certain – laudable – elements of New-Dealism created context for these elements to become established. To understand really what went wrong, it is necessary to look back before the 2000s and appreciate the interaction that was occurring between a long-term policy commitment to neoliberalism and piecemeal/fragmented application of approaches that aimed to assist financially disadvantaged people. Using the analogy of heart-attack pathology to guide some of its analysis, this essay argues for better policy-integration.

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.

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.

Discussion of the implications of precarious work for individual workers remains hesitant and often confused. A clear conceptualisation would separate out five analytical levels: precariousness in employment, precarious work, precarious workers individually and as an emerging class, and precarity as a general condition of social life. To illustrate the need to avoid slippage between the concepts of precarious work and precarious workers, we present one ‘theory-relevant’ example – full-time secondary school students in Australia who hold part-time jobs in the retail sector. Their part-time jobs are indeed precarious but the negative effects on the student-workers are modest, both because participation in precarious work is limited (moderate weekly hours and intermittent work within the framework of a brief stage of the life course) and because many (though not all) of the associated risks are cushioned by structural forces such as access to alternative income sources and career paths. At the same time, however, a longitudinal perspective reveals that the same group of student-workers faces major risks in the future, as a result of increasingly insecure labour markets. Reflections on this example help to identify conceptual tools that can be applied to a wide range of other examples of precarious work.

This is a study of the renegotiation of pay, employment security, and of the relationship between government and public sector unions, in an Australian state public service during and after the global financial crisis. It examines the extent to which this renegotiation of the ‘public service bargain’ was necessitated by austerity requirements, and the extent to which the crisis provided an opportunity for the deprivileging of public employment that has been an enduring feature of the neoliberal state. A case study of the different approaches of two Queensland governments to their relationships with public sector workers between 2009 and 2014, it tracks two key measures of wages and staff numbers, as well as the consequences of breaches of the trust relationships of the traditional public sector bargain. Given the moderate nature of Australia’s economic downturn, the implementation of public service austerity measures was less an economic necessity than an opportunity for a conservative government to alter employment policies and sever union relationships. This continuation of public sector employment relations favoured by previous conservative governments had electoral consequences.

The impact of the financial crisis has reignited debate about the scope and scale of public sector restructuring and its consequences for the workforce in Britain. The economic crisis precipitated austerity measures concentrated on expenditure reductions with the intention of reducing the public deficit. Because the public sector pay bill comprises over half of current public spending, achieving deficit reduction has major consequences for the total pay bill and the workforce. This article assesses the restructuring of the public sector and public sector employment relations in Britain and identifies underlying continuities in public sector restructuring over recent decades. Drawing on and repositioning New Labour’s legacy, the Coalition government used the economic crisis to establish a pro-austerity frame that has legitimated deep cuts in public sector employment and involved measures to refashion public sector employment relations. The article considers the consequences of this agenda and responses by trade unions and indicates some of the limits and uncertain prospects for public sector restructuring under conditions of austerity.

The Economy for the Common Good movement proposes an alternative economic model, which promises to offset many of the detrimental effects of the contemporary labour market. Yet, despite its increasing economic and social relevance in Europe, there is little research on Economy for the Common Good firms and the quality of the jobs they offer their employees. We thus, first, introduce the ideas of this movement and then present findings on workplace characteristics and the well-being of workers. Our results are based on our own survey of Economy for the Common Good employees from 2018 and on the sixth wave of the European Working Conditions Survey. Our analyses offer mixed support for the claims of the Economy for the Common Good – while Economy for the Common Good workers can be found in high-quality work settings, their absenteeism and presenteeism, as well as indicators of control, time pressure, direct participation and financial participation do not differ from other workers when controlled in a propensity score matching approach. Based on our findings and feedback from Economy for the Common Good representatives, we conclude that the introduction of Eonomy for the Common Good ideas might be too recent to see any positive effects, but also that Economy for the Common Good companies should place more focus on their employees’ well-being.