Angela Knox

‘Lost in translation’: an analysis of temporary work agency employment in hotels

Temporary work continues to stimulate research and debate in many developed countries. This research provides contemporary data on temporary work agency employment in the Australian hotel industry. Findings reveal that an absence of regulation governing the temporary work agency industry in conjunction with strong migrant labour supply and extremely active agency-client firm interactions has entrenched TWA employment and restructured the labour market in a coercive fashion.

The differential effects of regulatory reform : evidence from the Australian luxury hotel industry

Australias industrial relations framework has undergone substantial change since the 1980s. This has involved a series of distinct phases including: award restructuring, the introduction of enterprise and individual bargaining, and award simplification. Notably, the federal award for the hotel industry formed the Test Case for award simplification, forming the first simplified award in Australia. Exploratory research analysing the Test Case processes suggested that the simplified award favours employers and leads to disadvantageous outcomes for employees. This study builds on the extant evidence by analysing the implications of award simplification in the context of actual hotel workplaces. Its purpose is to examine the effects of award simplification and compare them with the outcomes associated with enterprise bargaining, focusing in particular on working time arrangements in the Australian hotel industry. The study adopts a qualitative approach, involving multiple case studies. Overall, the findings suggest that hotel employers are adopting bifurcated employment strategies, reflecting their respective bargaining arrangements. At a more subtle level, the effects of regulatory reform differed both within and between workplaces, highlighting rather distinctive and varied implications for many different employees. Importantly, this revealed the diverse needs and preferences of the parties involved and illustrated the complex outcomes associated with regulatory reform. These outcomes appear to be substantially more nuanced than indicated previously.

Gender desegregation and equal employment opportunity in Australian luxury hotels: Are we there yet?

Research examining the nature and effects of Australias equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation has illustrated the disappointing lack of progress made by women since legislative enactment in 1986. The findings also highlight our poor understanding of gender-based employment segregation and the EEO policies and programs that exist within Australian firms. In part, this is the result of the conduct of surprisingly few studies involving qualitative research at the workplace level. Adopting a case study approach within the Australian luxury hotel industry, the present research highlights marked and persistent patterns of gender segregation. Moreover, it reveals what actually happens within organisations and exposes factors that influence patterns of gender segregation and desegregation in the workplace, including: business strategy; employee demographics; history and tradition; customer expectations; and non compliance with legislation. Overall, a minority of managers were seen to be advancing womens employment opportunities.

Job Quality Matters

This special issue of the Journal of Industrial Relations focuses on job quality. Implicitly and explicitly, job quality features strongly in current debates about work amongst policymakers, practitioners and academics. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) (2010) makes strong demands for a ‘decent work’ policy agenda to raise labour standards, enhance employment and income opportunities, provide social protection and social security, and promote social dialogue. With the Lisbon Agreement of 2000, the EU has also promoted ‘decent work’, trying to balance the raising of employment participation and improvements to job quality (see Kok High Level Expert Group, 2004). In the US, unions and think tanks have called for improvements to job quality to deal with social and economic problems (AFL-CIO, 2008; Brookings Institute, 2007). In addition to the recent publication of a raft of academic books on the subject (e.g. Bazen et al., 2005; Gallie, 2007; Gautie & Schmitt, 2010; Green, 2006, 2009), academics on both sides of the Atlantic oriented to public policy have called for a ‘new deal’ or ‘new strategy’ for workers in bad jobs (Grimshaw et al., 2008; Haley-Lock & Ewert, this issue; Osterman, 2008; see also the UK’s ESRC-funded seminar series Making Bad Jobs Better, available at: http://ewds.strath.ac.uk/badjobsbetter/Home.aspx). Debates about job quality are not new. Throughout the last half of the 20th century (if not earlier; see Darr & Warhurst, 2009), two camps fought a war about the future of work. On the one side were the optimists, plotting a rising

More than a feeling: using hotel room attendants to improve understanding of job quality

Recent research by Adler and Adler reveals contradictory claims about the job quality of hotel room attendants; suggesting that an objectively ‘bad’ job can be perceived as subjectively ‘good’ by workers. This contradiction resonates with wider issues about how job quality is conceived – objectively and/or subjectively. Drawing on empirical research of room attendant jobs in upper market hotels in three cities in the UK and Australia, this paper addresses the contradiction by examining both the objective and subjective dimensions of job quality for room attendants. In doing so it refines Adler and Adlers work, constructs a new typology of workers and a new categorisation of job quality informed by workers characteristics and preferences. This categorisation improves conceptual understanding of job quality by enjoining its objective and subjective dimensions.

Human resource management (HRM) in temporary work agencies: Evidence from the hospitality industry

Overwhelmingly, research examining temporary work agency (TWA) employment suggests that agencies rely on cost-based HRM, which coincides with substandard outcomes for TWA workers and clients. While contrasting literature indicates that ‘value adding’ HRM may yield more positive outcomes, empirical evidence remains scarce. This case study–based research begins to redress this gap by comparing TWAs reliant on cost-based and ‘value adding’ HRM within the hospitality industry. Findings illustrate that TWA employment and ‘value adding’ HRM are compatible and advantageous, yielding superior outcomes for TWA workers and clients.

Never the twain shall meet? The customer-oriented bureaucracy and equal employment opportunity in service work

Purpose – Although equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation was introduced in Australia two decades ago, womens position in the labour market has not improved markedly. This paper seeks to understand the reasons for womens lack of progress by examining the processes that underpin the (gendered) division of labour in the hotel sector using the analytical framework of customer‐oriented bureaucracy.Design/methodology/approach – The study is qualitative in nature, consisting of case studies within the Australian luxury hotel industry. The concept of customer‐oriented bureaucracy is applied as a lens for interpreting the data.Findings – The findings suggest that gender segregation is established and maintained, at least in part, by the dual pressures of customer orientation and bureaucracy. In addition, however, the results highlight the importance of supply‐related factors. Thus, the concept of customer‐oriented bureaucracy, in its current form, only partially accounts for gender segregation. Policy r...

Work organisation, bullying and intention to leave in the hospitality industry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between work organisation, bullying and intention to leave (ITL) in the Australian hospitality industry, using pressure, disorganisation and regulatory failure (PDR) to measure work organisation. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 72 workers in Australian accommodation hotels. They were aged 20-65 years (M=38.26, SD=12.60) and 57.1 per cent were female. The proposed path model was tested with the Mplus (v.7) statistical package using Hayes’ (2009) procedure for mediation analysis. Findings There were positive bivariate correlations between all variables. The path model indicated that disorganisation and regulatory failure had direct positive associations with bullying. Financial pressure and bullying had direct positive associations with ITL. Research limitations/implications The small sample may not be representative and the cross-sectional design and self-report data risk common method variance effects and preclude attributions of causality. Future studies should use more representative samples and longitudinal designs to address common method variance issues and facilitate causal inferences. Originality/value Bullying and turnover are significant problems in the hospitality industry, but the contribution of work organisation variables is poorly understood. The present study provides promising preliminary evidence on the potential role of PDR as an antecedent of both bullying and ITL.

Coffee nation: an analysis of jobs in Australia's café industry

Using qualitative research this paper examines the characteristics of jobs in Australias bourgeoning cafe industry. Contrary to overwhelmingly negative ‘McJob’ characterisations, the results indicate that substantial variation in jobs exists. Significant beneficial changes within the industry are producing ‘Maestro Jobs’ that offer superior pay and benefits, advanced skills and training and expanding progression opportunities. Greater industry-level vocational training is needed to support the expansion of Maestro Jobs and the growth of Australias ‘ground-breaking’ cafe industry.

Book Review Symposium: Caroline Lloyd and Jonathan Payne, Skills in the Age of Over-Qualification: Comparing Service Sector Work in EuropeLloydCarolinePayneJonathanSkills in the Age of Over-Qualification: Comparing Service Sector Work in EuropeOxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, £55 hbk, (ISBN: 9780199672356), 288 pp.

particularly salient within an approach that ‘foregrounds the role of agency and conflict as a counterweight to the structural constraints of institutional path dependencies’ (p. 61), though this counterweight is often a difficult line to tread. Chapter 4 sets out in each country the institutions of industrial relations and contemporary and historical shifts in the national systems of regulation, welfare and skill formation. Neo-liberalism in the UK is seen to impose considerable limits compared to the more benign Norwegian employment regime, which exhibits ‘remarkable continuity and resilience’ (p. 89). The empirical analysis uncovers complex and varied patterns of employment change across the three sectors. This challenges simple depictions of national employment logics, even if some clear points of demarcation are evident. The study of vocational teachers clearly shows how the principles of marketisation and the new public management have undermined the professional ethos of teaching in the UK, with rampant managerialism and performance monitoring, lower qualification requirements, work intensification and reduced autonomy. The profession has faced similar, if less acute, challenges in Norway and France, but these have been resisted, due to the increased power of organised labour, and traditions of professional status and autonomy have been protected. The cases of fitness instructors and cafe workers are less clear cut (where careful sample selection may be a challenge). Qualifications and job complexity were highest for French fitness workers due to legal regulation, and much lower for Norwegian workers. Similarly, low levels of qualification, job complexity and pay were common for cafe workers in all three countries, although the Norwegian workers had marginally higher levels of discretion and autonomy. Overall the analysis is compelling. Yet, while the authors are careful to stress potential similarities across countries and aim to avoid crude all-encompassing national stereotypes, they do have a clear position that job quality is more likely in the Scandinavian context. This may well be the case, but key challenges are left hanging. First, while the authors rightly highlight the beneficial constraints afforded by the institutions of collective bargaining in Norway, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the implementation of national agreements at the local level is often problematic, even in this highly coordinated context. While the voice of unions was naturally relatively absent from this analysis, not least because of their lack of presence in the fitness and cafe sectors, the role of social relations and power struggles was also left somewhat underdeveloped at the organisational level. Second, as the book notes, borrowing policy from one system (such as the Nordic approach) to another (such as the UK) is beset with problems. In this regard, while the concluding comment on optimism and progressive possibilities (p. 215) is laudable, the emphasis on traditional collective bargaining, general education and divergent capitalisms was more question begging than a utopian vision. These are however points for debate. There is no doubt that this book is destined to become a classic and is the most significant contribution to the skills debate in at least the last 10 years.