Alistair Rainnie

Introduction: call centres, the networked economy and the value chain

In July 2006, members of Monash University’s Australian Centre for Research in Employment and Work (ACREW) joined with colleagues from King’s College London to hold a conference focused on ‘Socially responsive, socially responsible approaches to employment and work’ (DeCieri et al., 2006). One of the five conference streams was devoted to work and employment in call centres and was organized by the lead author of this introduction (Rainnie). This special edition of the JIR includes a number of articles from that stream.

Who cleans up?: The declining earnings position of cleaners in Australia

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.

Assessing the Impact of Employment Regulation on the Low-Paid in Victoria

Since 1993 and the removal of the separate award system for the Australian State of Victoria, many Victorian workers have been on five minimum conditions and on pay levels well below that of employees in other States. Despite attempts to rectify the situation (with Victorian common rule awards), issues of coverage and employer compliance remained. The implementation of WorkChoices legislation in 2006 posed a further challenge to Victorian low-paid workers. Our research found that the impact of WorkChoices on the Victorian low-paid has been largely insidious, surfacing primarily as an increased wage-effort ratio, with people working more unpaid hours and at an increased pace. The implications of this are that these hidden effects are more likely to linger, even with the replacement of WorkChoices with the Fair Work Act, 2009. Furthermore, it appears that employer compliance with minimum conditions requires more adequate enforcement by the Federal Government.

The challenges of working in Australian academia: an introduction

This is an introduction to and an overview of the issues highlighted in this special issue on work in the higher education sector of Australia and New Zealand. Drawn from a special session of the AIRAANZ 2013 conference, this issue highlights the profound structural changes that are occurring in the sector, the extreme segmentation of the academic workforce, and outlines the effects of these changes on all workers in the sector. The presented research not only identifies the challenges but also offers suggestions around improving pedagogy, reducing barriers to gender equality and addressing the aspirations of the segmented under class of workers in the sector including sessional academics, professional and administrative staff. The research also highlights the potential and limitations of IR solutions to many of the workforce and workplace issues confronting the sector.

Community and Unions

This article is an introduction to this issue of Labor Studies Journal, which is a collection of articles on the conference held in Prato, Italy, July 1–4, 2006, on the theme of “Socially Responsive, Socially Responsible Approaches to Employment and Work.”

Ecological modernisation, industry policy and the Australian automotive industry, 2007–13

Ecological modernisation (EM), in theory and practice, has increasingly become central to contemporary state environmental reform agendas. EMs allure lies in its central tenet that the contemporary institutions of capitalism can be ecologically adapted to achieve ‘win–win’ economic and environmental outcomes. How government policy can best accomplish this aim is contested, however, with weak and strong EM approaches advocating different roles for the state in facilitating ecological restructuring. The latter approaches argue that for EM processes to be successful, state intervention via ecological industrial policy is required. This article makes a unique contribution to the industry policy and EM debate by assessing the manner in which EM was conceptualised and implemented within the Australian governments automotive industry policy between 2007 and 2013. This analysis raises issues about the institutional capacity of states to pursue either weak or strong forms of EM. 生态现代化在理论上和实践上日益成为当代国家环境改革的中心议题。环境现代化所以诱人在于其核心原则：当代资本主义体制生态上可以取得经济、环境的双赢结果。不过政府政策如何实现这一目标确是挑战，生态现代化有强、弱二途，政府在促进生态重构时扮演不同的角色。按强势思路，要想生态现代化成功，需要国家通过生态产业政策进行干预。本文对2007至2013年澳大利亚政府的汽车产业政策形成和实施的方式做了评估，希望以此对产业政策以及生态现代化的辩论有所助益。本文还提出了国家实施强、弱生态现代化的体制能力的问题。

Contemporary research on work, workplaces and industrial relations in Australia

Industrial relations (IR) and work-related debates are rarely out of the news in Australia. There have been calls by the Productivity Commission for increasing the retirement age, and business lobbies are requesting the abolition of penalty rates, the amendment of unfair dismissal legislation and a reduction in the minimum wage rate (Heath and Greber, 2013; McDonald, 2013). Despite IR not figuring in the recent federal elections, and the coalition claiming that it would not be introducing any significant changes to workplace legislation (apart from its improved national paid parental leave scheme), there has already been a chorus of calls for the government to take the opportunity to deregulate the labour market (Frydenberg, 2013). Alongside the political dimension of IR, there is a challenge for academics and practitioners in accommodating innovations at work, workplaces and in working life. Technology has spawned new forms of work such as telecommuting, homework and mobile work (Commonwealth of Australia, 2006). The workplace has been transformed as contact centres allow the bundling, outsourcing and offshoring of services delivery, and the expansion in the resources sector has seen the growth in ‘fly in fly out’ (FIFO), and temporary migrant visa arrangements to fill skill shortages and move labour into remote regions (Hoath and McKenzie, 2013; Velayutham, 2013). Against this background of extensive change to work and to workplaces, traditional IR issues remain pertinent. These include forms of voice and collective representation in a context of declining trade union density (Wilkinson et al., 2013), the efficiency and effectiveness of enterprise bargaining to accommodate workplace change in a fair and equitable manner (Townsend et al., 2013), new forms of precariousness in the workforce (Wilson and Ebert, 2013) and the rigidity of the gender pay gap despite the growing female workforce share (Wade, 2013).

Global Production Networks and Resources in Western Australia

This chapter draws on the literature on global production networks and spatiality to examine the development of Western Australia and its relationship with the resource sector, with an emphasis on institutional capture, the dynamics of regional development dominated by large external capital, and a contested notion of place.

Supply chains and responsibility for OHS management in the Western Australian resources sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse human resource supply chains and the responsibility of occupational health and safety (OHS) management using Australian evidence from two unrelated research studies in the resources sector. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based on additional findings from the research projects using qualitative case study methodologies. The paper draws on interviews with the underground mining manager in study 1 and the OHS manager in study 2, together with current literature on supply chains and OHS responsibility in Australia. Findings – The paper uses examples drawn from two research studies conducted in the resources sector in 2011 to present the notion that there has been a shift in responsibility and management of OHS from the top of the supply chain to the bottom. Research limitations/implications – The paper draws on two unrelated studies that investigated different issues in OHS management. There is a need to undertake specific research to confirm th...