Brett Heino

The state, class and occupational health and safety: locating the capitalist state's role in the regulation of OHS in NSW

This paper adopts a Marxist political economy approach to locate the place of an occupational health and safety (OHS) legal regime within capitalist economic, political and social relations. A theoretically rigorous account of OHS regulation requires a systemic integration of class and the state as analytic categories. It is argued that OHS regulation is a product of the historical epoch of capitalism in which it is inserted and the nature of the state as a ‘strategic-relational,’ form-determined social relationship. This hypothesis is tested through an analysis of the legislation in New South Wales (NSW) emanating from the findings of the 1972 UK Robens Committee and 1981 NSW Williams Report. It is demonstrated that the case study period represents a transitional era in which the impulses to regulate OHS stem from both a labour movement strengthened by the post-War Fordist boom and an ‘institutional search’ to find ways out of the developing economic crisis.

If you're in my way, I'm walking: the assault on working people since 1970

unions in other parts of the country: for example, it is surprising that Ruth Milkman’s research on Los Angeles is not referenced (Milkman 2008). With more comparisons to other parts of the country, the book could have come further in providing an intelligible analysis of the struggle in Wisconsin. Such a discussion would have necessitated questions like, What kind of economic structure is there in Wisconsin, and what kind of workers? What kind of union, social and political traditions? What kind of political power balance? And so on. Wisconsin Uprising shies away from such structural questions, and the result is more a political pamphlet than anything else. In the Introduction, it says that the book is not a ‘quickie’ (p. 12). But mostly, it is.

Capitalism, regulation theory and Australian labour law: Towards a new theoretical model

This article employs the methodology of the Parisian regulation approach to periodise Australian capitalism into distinct models of development. Within such models, labour law plays a key role in articulating the abstract capitalist need to commodify labour-power with the concrete realities of class struggle. Given the differential ordering of social contradictions and the distinct relationship of social forces within the fabric of each model of development, such formations will crystallise distinct regimes of labour law. This is demonstrated by a study of the two successive models of development that have characterised Australian political economy since the post-Second World War era: antipodean Fordism (1945 to mid-1970s) and liberal-productivism (late-1980s to the present). The result of this examination is a model of legal analysis that, although tailored to the Australian experience, is capable of application in other contexts.

Trading hours deregulation in Tasmania and Western Australia: large retailer dominance and changing models of development

ABSTRACT The transformation of Australian capitalism from the 1970s onwards has exercised a tremendous impact on trading hours legislation. In the shift between an antipodean Fordist and liberal-productivist model of development, the competition principle has assumed central importance, eroding perceived legislative fetters to free competition and more generally spurring a withdrawal of the state from direct economic regulation. Trading hours legislation is a prime example of this reality. Whereas the 1960s was an era of more-or-less regulated and circumscribed trading hours, the movement throughout the 1970s–2000s has been towards progressively looser controls. This is a movement driven by large retailers, who have found themselves wielding immense economic and political power within the fabric of liberal-productivism. Their efforts to squeeze out smaller operators through the continual extension of trading hours also dovetailed with a general effort on the part of the national state to diffuse the competition principle throughout the Australian economy, represented most graphically by the National Competition Policy of the 1990s. Given the historically state-based character of shop hours in Australia, this movement is demonstrated by an analysis of two case-study states, Western Australia and Tasmania.

Book review: If You’re in My Way, I’m Walking: The Assault on Working People Since 1970, by Thom Workman

unions in other parts of the country: for example, it is surprising that Ruth Milkman’s research on Los Angeles is not referenced (Milkman 2008). With more comparisons to other parts of the country, the book could have come further in providing an intelligible analysis of the struggle in Wisconsin. Such a discussion would have necessitated questions like, What kind of economic structure is there in Wisconsin, and what kind of workers? What kind of union, social and political traditions? What kind of political power balance? And so on. Wisconsin Uprising shies away from such structural questions, and the result is more a political pamphlet than anything else. In the Introduction, it says that the book is not a ‘quickie’ (p. 12). But mostly, it is.