The Accidental Republic is a concern for all industrialised countries, and China is no exception. To solve this problem, Workers’ Compensation Insurance (WCI) is a perfect option. The redemption of The Accidental Republic can be understood through the development of WCI. However, little attention has been paid to the development of Chinese WCI. Starting from labour insurance regulations promulgated in 1951, this research explores over 70 years of reform and development of Chinese WCI, explicitly dividing reforms into three phases – establishment and implementation, exploration and practice, and adaptation and formation – that aligned with stages of China’s economic development. Further, the insurance fund performance in the last decade is evaluated by Data envelopment analysis and Malmquist (DEA-Malmquist), through the static and dynamic results, yielding generally average results. Subsequently, five major problems of WCI are identified and discussed and five suggestions offered drawing on international comparison and the national situation. Lastly, the accidental and inevitable aspects of China’s WCI system during the redemption of The Accidental Republic are summarised.

The introduction of the 2012 Labour Code is considered ‘groundbreaking’ in industrial relations in Vietnam. However, knowledge about the effects of this law is still minimal. This study provides the first evidence of the impacts of the law on worker outcomes, disaggregated by location and migration status. The Vietnam Labour Force Survey is used as the primary dataset. Both difference-in-differences and fixed-effect models are applied in the investigation. The estimated results show a relationship between the introduction of the law and the labour supply of contracted workers in urban areas, especially long-term migrant workers. Furthermore, income for these long-term migrant contract workers was affected significantly by the introduction of the law. A link between the law and health insurance participation was also found among non-migrant contracted workers in urban areas. We also perform estimations using a short panel sample and find notable results. The study likewise reveals disadvantages of rural workers compared to urban workers in terms of earnings, and of short-term migrants compared to other workers, in terms of labour supply.

This article considers, summarises, and analyses the merits of various arguments regarding options for regulating (or not regulating) ‘gig work’, concluding with observations about currently proposed legislation. There is a strong argument for regulating gig work. Many workers are vulnerable, and many of the arguments against any form or regulation – in terms of innovation, productivity, employment, or the inevitability of this trend – lack merit. Current definitions of employment, indeed current labour law, are not adequate and many, but not all, gig workers are like employees in terms of the control exercised over them. However, treating gig workers as employees would encounter several problems. The outcomes would be uncertain. Not all would be covered. Many gig workers would be opposed (despite wanting protection). The gig firms could render such legislation ineffective, or alternatively succeed in mobilising opposition, almost ensuring such legislation would be revoked at the next change of government. Regulating gig work as a form of contracting is a viable alternative. It has the potential to attract support from gig workers themselves, undermining opposition by the gig firms, and attract support from some parts of capital. The New South Wales experience shows us that regulation of gig work as contracting is feasible and politically sustainable. Despite limitations, the ‘Closing the Loopholes’ Bill provides a sustainable model for regulating and protecting many ‘gig economy’ workers. It is time to envisage labour law as something that extends not just to employees but to many contractors as well.

Singapore’s Progressive Wage Model, introduced in 2012 and mandatory in the cleaning industry since 2015, is a skills- and productivity-based approach to redesigning jobs and restructuring wages in the largely outsourced cleaning, security and landscaping sectors. Focusing on cleaning work in the food and beverage industry, this case study examines some early outcomes of this national drive to reduce wage inequality by improving the pay and conditions of commodified work in a sector subject to outsourcing-based cost competition. Based on interviews with cleaners, supervisors and managers, the findings suggest that in general, government and the trade union and employers’ association have worked together, to set wages and conditions transparently. Nevertheless, enforcement issues mean that cleaners remain vulnerable. They have limited information about their employment benefits and face various types of poor conditions, some sanctioned by and others in violation of labour laws. These vulnerabilities have structural roots, including rent imbalances and cheap sourcing, factors that commodify jobs. The implementation of the Progressive Wage Model may have helped de-commodify cleaning jobs for Singaporeans and permanent residents, but such outcomes are still dependent on non-systemic and unenforceable factors such as the kindness of individual supervisors. While a promising start has been made, Singapore’s initial efforts to improve incomes and conditions in low-wage work will nevertheless require stronger regulatory commitment.

Employer breaches of New Zealand’s minimum employer standards and other forms of worker exploitation have been increasingly recognised as a significant problem. This affects migrant workers in particular, and among them those working without documentation or on various types of non-resident visas. Exploitation has become particularly embedded in a number of industries: fishing, hospitality and tourism, and in some sectors of agriculture, particularly those dependent on seasonal labour. Initially, government action to mitigate these problems was slow and reluctant but over the last decade, culminating in the reforms of 2016, there has been a more focussed effort to provide a strong legislative framework to support minimum employment standards. This article describes the background to those reforms, analyses the reforms themselves and goes on to consider whether they are adequate to ensure access to justice by disadvantaged workers.

It is widely agreed that there is a crisis in labour/employment standards enforcement. A key issue is the role of deterrence measures that penalise violations. Employment standards enforcement in Ontario, like in most jurisdictions, is based mainly on a compliance framework promoting voluntary resolution of complaints and, if that fails, ordering restitution. Deterrence measures that penalise violations are rarely invoked. However, the Ontario government has recently increased the role of proactive inspections and tickets, a low-level deterrence measure which imposes fines of CAD295 plus victim surcharges. In examining the effectiveness of the use of tickets in inspections, we begin by looking at this development in the broader context of employment standards enforcement and its historical trajectory. Then, using administrative data from the Ministry of Labour, we examine when and why tickets are issued in the course of workplace inspections. After demonstrating that even when ticketable violations are detected, tickets are issued only rarely, we explore factors associated with an increased likelihood of an inspector issuing a ticket. Finally, we consider how the overall deterrent effect of workplace inspections is influenced by the use or non-use of deterrence tools.

Crowdwork conducted via digital platforms is a young form of work, but a growing part of the gig economy. Typical for crowdwork is low pay, volatile income streams and no social security benefits. Also, crowdworkers have few possibilities for social comparison or negotiation because they work outside of company organisations. This article examines the question of whether these conditions mean that crowdworkers’ expectations about justice in crowdwork arrangements differ in comparison to their expectations regarding justice in conventional employment relationships. This question is addressed empirically on the basis of 36 qualitative interviews and a survey of 230 crowdworkers. The justice expectations of crowdworkers involved in different types of crowdworking platforms in German-speaking countries were examined. In our sample, crowd work typically serves to supplement – not replace – conventional employment. This explorative research shows that crowdworkers use similar standards of justice regarding work performance in their evaluations of work mediated via crowdwork platforms and conventional employment. It shows that crowdworkers perceive injustices in four specific areas: planning insecurity, lack of transparency in performance evaluation, lack of clarity in task briefings and low remuneration. These areas correspond to the theoretical dimensions of distributive and procedural justice on Colquitt’s (2001) organisational justice scale. These findings have implications for future efforts to regulate crowdwork.

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.

This article empirically investigates two propositions normally advanced to explain employment stagnation in the organised sector of the Indian labour market namely, rigid labour laws regulating the ‘hiring and firing’ of workers (along with factory closures) and militant trade union activity boosting workers’ bargaining power. It is claimed that labour laws arrest employment creation by making the labour adjustment process difficult. Additionally, it is claimed that workers’ increased bargaining power raises the effective cost of labour, hindering employment creation. This article critically examines both these claims. First, it questions whether labour laws can be held responsible as an explanation for employment stagnation in the organised sector as a whole, since a close reading of the Indian legislation reveals that labour laws apply in less than 35% of aggregate employment in the organised sector in India. Next, it investigates whether employment stagnation in those industry segments where labour laws apply – namely, organised manufacturing – is due to restrictions on ‘hiring and firing’. We find no evidence to support this hypothesis. Finally, it analyses the trend in workers’ bargaining power through various indicators, and finds such power to be unambiguously declining. Thus, the study finds no empirical support for the two conventional arguments put forward to explain employment stagnation in the organised sector of the Indian labour market.

The ‘gig economy’ uses digital platforms to bypass many of the regular responsibilities and costs of employment. Ambiguity as to whether gig-economy workers are independent contractors, dependent contractors or employees allows the undermining of traditional labour standards governing minimum wages and other legislated employment conditions. Labour law and institutions need to catch up to the new reality of this form of work and develop new tools to protect and enhance minimum standards for workers in digital platform businesses. Unions, business and government all have a role to play in the long term. Meanwhile, direct engagement between these new firms and workers’ advocates can also help to mitigate the risks posed to labour standards by digital business models, by addressing regulatory gaps. This article is a case study of innovative negotiations between one platform business (Airtasker) and Unions New South Wales, a peak trade unions body in New South Wales, Australia, in order to establish agreed minimum standards for engagements negotiated through this platform.

Throughout the English-speaking world, collective bargaining has commonly been considered to be an option for workers discontent with the default system of management-determined conditions of work. In this article it is argued that, as a universally acclaimed human right, collective bargaining should be considered a minimum condition for everyone employed under standardised conditions of work. The government policy of offering workers a choice to bargain or to refrain from bargaining, in effect in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, does not meet that standard. Just as the equity goal of governments is the absence of inequality based on traits such as sex and colour, the government bargaining policy goal should be universal collective bargaining. Anything short of universality should be considered a social problem in search of a more effective policy solution.

The race to develop and implement autonomous systems and artificial intelligence has challenged the responsiveness of governments in many areas and none more so than in the domain of labour market policy. This article draws upon a large survey of Singaporean employees and managers (N = 332) conducted in 2019 to examine the extent and ways in which artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies have begun impacting workplaces in Singapore. Our conclusions reiterate the need for government intervention to facilitate broad-based participation in the productivity benefits of fourth industrial revolution technologies while also offering re-designed social safety nets and employment protections.

While other research has shown that higher paid truck and bus drivers are safer, this is the first study showing why higher paid drivers are safer. We estimate the labour supply curve for long-haul truck drivers in the United States, applying two-stage least squares regression to a national survey of truck drivers. We start with the standard model of the labour supply curve and then develop two novel extensions of it, incorporating pay level and pay method, and testing the target earnings hypothesis. We distinguish between long-haul and short-haul jobs driving commercial motor vehicles. Truck and bus drivers choose between long-distance jobs requiring very long hours of work away from home and short-distance jobs generally requiring fewer hours. The labour supply curve exhibits a classic backward bending shape, reflecting drivers’ preference to work until they reach target earnings. Above target earnings, at a ‘safe rate’ for truck drivers, they trade labour for leisure, working fewer hours, leading to greater highway safety. Drivers work fewer hours at a higher pay rate and likely have less fatigue. Pay rates also have implications for driver health because worker health deteriorates as working time exceeds 40 hours.

This discussion paper by a group of scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations argues that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no return to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic’s disastrous worldwide health impacts have been exacerbated by, and have compounded, the unsustainability of economic globalisation based on the neoliberal dismantling of state capabilities in favour of markets. Flow-on economic impacts have simultaneously created major supply and demand disruptions, and highlighted the growing within-country inequalities and precarity generated by neoliberal regimes of labour market regulation. Taking an Australian and international perspective, we examine these economic and labour market impacts, paying particular attention to differential impacts on First Nations people, developing countries, women, immigrants and young people. Evaluating policy responses in a political climate of national and international leadership very different from those in which major twentieth century crises were addressed, we argue the need for a national and international conversation to develop a new pathway out of crisis.

The increase in pension eligibility ages in Australia, as elsewhere, throws into relief the consequences of gender inequality in employment. Because of career histories in lower paid and more insecure employment, a higher percentage of women than men are dependent on the age pension rather than on superannuation or savings and investments, and so will be disproportionately affected by deferred access. Yet, fewer women than men hold the types of ‘good jobs’ that will sustain them into an older age. Women are more likely to be sequestered in precarious employment, with reduced job quality and a greater potential for premature workforce exit. This article counterposes macro-level data drawn from national cross-sectional labour force statistics and the longitudinal Household Income and Labour Dynamics Australia survey, with case study analysis, based on interviews with 38 women in midlife insecure jobs, in order to identify the types of life course and labour market barriers that contribute to women’s reliance on the pension and the systemic disadvantage that will render them particularly vulnerable to any further erosion of this safety net. The analysis moves between this empirical evidence and a discussion, drawing on the theoretical literature, of the failure in equal opportunity endeavours over recent decades and what this means for later life workforce participation for women.

The employment relationship in a growing number of industries with large concentrations of low wage workers has become ‘fissured’, where the lead firms that collectively determine the product market conditions in which wages and conditions are set have become separated from the actual employment of the workers who provide goods or services. Instead, the direct employers of low wage workers operate in far more competitive markets that create conditions for non-compliance. We examine this evolution in employment and its implications for public policy in the US, discuss the factors driving fissured employment and sketch its main features and outcomes. We then look at the traditional methods used for labour standards enforcement in the US and discuss why they are poorly suited to address fissured workplaces. Finally, we survey how public policies might better address the realities of the modern workplace, including efforts in this regard by the Obama administration.

The impact of minimum wage legislation has been widely discussed and is a major concern among labour economists. This article investigates, from economic, legal, international political, trade, and social perspectives, the possibility of decoupling foreign workers’ wages from the minimum wage in Taiwan. The results show that foreign workers’ wages cannot possibly be decoupled from the minimum wage, and foreign workers should not be treated as a separate group of workers in Taiwan’s minimum wage policy.

While the extent of employer non-compliance with minimum employment standards has yet to be decisively determined in Australia, there is evidence to suggest that it is both prevalent and persistent. This article draws on the scholarship emerging from the regulatory studies field to explore the underlying impulses and issues that may have led to this compliance gap. It considers how a more pluralistic and decentred understanding of regulation may improve compliance. This understanding is then applied to examine the various ways in which the federal labour inspectorate — the Fair Work Ombudsman — has sought to supplement and strengthen its existing compliance and enforcement mechanisms by harnessing or ‘enrolling’ non-state stakeholders, such as employer associations, trade unions, top-level firms and key individuals.

The purpose of this article is to investigate emerging areas of precarious employment in Sweden. Based on the literature on dimensions of precariousness and neoliberalism, this article will begin with an analysis of the transitioning Swedish welfare state and the contextual environment of precarious employment in Sweden. This will serve as a point of departure for the development of an occupational classification scheme including measures of income and employment security. In an empirical analysis, the occupational classification will be applied to a population-based register material including two birth cohorts of employed Swedish residents aged 28–33, with a registered income. The development of income and employment security will be described and discussed. By applying this newly developed measure of precarious employment, this article will provide a platform for future theoretical and empirical research on precarious employment in a transitioning welfare state.

Paid work associated with digital platform businesses (in taxi, delivery, maintenance and other functions) embodies features which complicate the application of traditional labour regulations and employment standards. This article reviews the extent of this type of work in Australia, and its main characteristics. It then considers the applicability of existing employment regulations to these ‘gig’ jobs, citing both Australian and international legislation and case law. There is considerable uncertainty regarding the scope of traditional regulations, minimum standards and remedies in the realm of irregular digitally mediated work. Regulators and policymakers should consider how to strengthen and expand the regulatory framework governing gig work. The article notes five major options in this regard: enforcement of existing laws; clarifying or expanding definitions of ‘employment’; creating a new category of ‘independent worker’; creating rights for ‘workers’, not employees; and reconsidering the concept of an ‘employer’. We review the pros and cons of these approaches and urge regulators to be creative and ambitious in better protecting the minimum standards and conditions of workers in these situations.