Fiona Macdonald

‘No leg to stand on’: The moral economy of Australian industrial relations changes

Labour law changes in Australia in 2006 significantly reconfigured industrial relations institutions and the balance of power in the employment relationship – in favour of employers and against the low-paid in particular. This article analyses the changes as they affected low-waged women workers, using a moral economy framework. While acknowledging the importance of material rewards, a moral economy perspective focuses on aspects of work that are not reducible to the terms of the market. The article analyses how women articulated the effects of the legislation, and how work institutions embody moral conceptions, demonstrating how labour law change can markedly disrupt the underlying, taken-for-granted moral economy.

Alcohol brief interventions practice following training for multidisciplinary health and social care teams: A qualitative interview study

Introduction and Aims Few studies of the implementation of alcohol brief interventions (ABI) have been conducted in community settings such as mental health, social work and criminal justice teams. This qualitative interview study sought to explore the impact of training on ABI delivery by staff from a variety of such teams. Design and Methods Fifteen semi-structured telephone interviews were carried out with trained practitioners and with managers to explore the use of, perceived need for and approaches to ABI delivery and recording with clients, and compatibility of ABIs with current practice. Interviews were analysed thematically using an inductive approach. Results Very few practitioners reported delivery of any ABIs following training primarily because they felt ABIs to be inappropriate for their clients. According to practitioners, this was either because they drank too much or too little to benefit. Practitioners reported a range of current activities relating to alcohol, and some felt that their knowledge and confidence were improved following training. One practitioner reported ABI delivery and was considered a training success, while expectations of ABIs did not fit with current practice including assessment procedures for the remainder. Discussion and Conclusions Identified barriers to ABI delivery included issues relating to individual practitioners, their teams, current practice and the ABI model. They are likely to be best addressed by strategic team- and setting-specific approaches to implementation, of which training is only one part. [Fitzgerald N, Molloy H, MacDonald F, McCambridge J. Alcohol brief interventions practice following training for multidisciplinary health and social care teams: A qualitative interview study. Drug Alcohol Rev 2015;34:185–93]

Evaluation of a rollout of alcohol brief interventions in health- and social-care teams following multidisciplinary training

There is a robust body of evidence supporting alcohol brief intervention (BI) in primary health-care settings, but fewer studies have explored delivery elsewhere. This qualitative evaluation followed up staff in one integrated health and social-care service in Scotland to find out if and how multidisciplinary training in alcohol BI impacted practice, and if and why BI had been delivered following the training. Nineteen semi-structured in-depth qualitative telephone interviews were carried out among 10 of the 89 practitioners who had attended the course as well as among managers and administrators from various teams (e.g., social work, elder care, and community mental health). Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically. All quotations were checked with interviewees. Participants felt that training had improved their knowledge and confidence around alcohol and were supportive of having a role in delivering BI, but very few had actually delivered any. Practitioners perceived that their clients did not need alcohol BI for a variety of reasons, including that they either drank too much or too little to merit one. Despite this, practitioners described giving advice on alcohol but failed to recognize these conversations as opportunities to deliver BIs. A range of other barriers to delivery emerged, including the view that specific screening, delivery techniques, and monitoring of BIs did not fit with their current practice and assessment procedures, which already included (sometimes unhelpful) questions or questionnaires on alcohol use. The barriers to delivery were at individual, team, and service levels and are likely to be best addressed by a strategic approach of which training is only one part. The findings also suggest the need to take a setting-specific approach to efforts to embed BI delivery into routine practice.

Gender and informality at work – theoretical provocations: an introduction to the special issue on gender and informality

ABSTRACT This special issue examines the interaction of gender with informal work, processes of informalisation and experiences of informality as a defining feature of work under contemporary capitalism. The articles interrogate the interactions between the experiential, discursive and structural dimensions of informality as they emerge in relation to the social construction of gender relations. These analyses present a comprehensive survey of the ‘continuum of practices’ which constitute informality, and draws attention to the urgency of understanding the ways in which codified and social practices normalise, formalise and conceal the gendered dimensions of informality at work.

Thinking about informality: gender (in)equality (in) decent work across geographic and economic boundaries

ABSTRACT Perspectives on the informal economy having evolved over time from a notion of a separate and disappearing sector to a broader focus that takes account of the wide range of economic activities that comprise informal work and focuses on processes and on the interdependencies of the formal and informal economic spheres. In this article we consider contemporary thinking about informal work and ask how useful the concept is for understanding changes occurring in work and employment in developed as well as developing economies so as to develop interventions to generate decent work. We use the lens of informality to explore how analysis of work and employment outcomes might give a more central place to the political and social location and, in particular, to gender in the construction of poor jobs. We propose that the concept of informality offered by feminist and other critical approaches is suitable for the analysis of much contemporary informalisation in both developed and developing economy contexts. We also propose that analysis can be strengthened through the adoption of the concept of ‘invisibilisation’. We examine some particular types of feminised informal work in which there are high levels of vulnerability and disadvantage – homework and domestic and care work. We conclude that the constructs of informal work and informalisation of work can be used to highlight how gendered institutional and social processes construct work as beyond the effective reach of regulation.

Failing to live up to the promise: the politics of equal pay in ‘new’ workplace and industrial relations institutions

ABSTRACT Workplace and industrial relations regulations are key sites for policy intervention to address Australias gender pay gap, which, at 15.3 per cent, is almost as large as it was in 1997. In both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) the goal of equal pay has a more central place than it did in predecessor legislation. In particular, the Fair Work Act has the potential to deliver more gender-equitable wage structures through addressing systemic gender-based undervaluation at the industry level. Adopting a feminist institutional approach this article examines equal pay policy in the operations of workplace and industrial relations regulation to ask why, despite some recent successes, this potential appears unlikely to be realised.