Geoffrey V. Crockett

Equal Pay: Is the Pendulum Swinging Back?:

The literature on female pay suggests that a key determinant of female relative pay is the overall system of wage determination. The more deregulated the system the greater the gender inequality, reflecting the fact that women occupy a greater share of low wage occupations and, relative to men, are in a weaker bargaining position. Using the unique character of the Australian industrial institutional arrange ments, this paper conducts a within-country test of the hypothesis that labour market deregulation adversely affects female relative pay. Since the early 1990s institutional arrangements for pay determination and labour market regulation in Australia have undergone considerable change, although the reforms introduced vary. At one end of the spectrum there are regulatory systems based on individualism (e.g. Victorias). At the other there are collective systems, such as in New South Wales. The research in this paper shows that women in highly deregulated systems have experienced the greatest deterioration in their relative earnings when compared to more collectivist systems. The paper thus cautions against further labour market deregulation, noting also that the results shown here may just be the tip of the iceberg with respect to gender earnings inequality.

The Operation of Internal Labour Markets: Three Case Studies

The employment policies and practices of firms could be expected to exert an influence on the career patterns of their labour forces. The literature suggests that many of these policies and practices would have developed in response to the technological, managerial, and information needs of individual firms and would be specific to the particular firm. To investigate these relationships, detailed case studies were undertaken in three Western Australian firms. The results show that, in two of the firms for certain job ladders, and in the third for its total labour force, employ ment policies and practices were sensitive to the internal technological and other re quirements of the firm in ways that cut across expected market oriented responses to the labour market at large. Personnel on these job ladders did experience patterns of tenure, career path, training, and earnings that indicate response to these policies and practices. However, while some evidence was found that earnings of those on such job ladders were responsive to variables related to career within the firm, general investments in education and training appeared to be dominant.

Worker Participation and Firm Performance

Assessing the robustness of empirical estimates, and thus the generality of theoretical models, is an important objective in applied research. Accordingly, this paper offers a further test of the Freeman-Lazear employee involvement model. The theoretical model posits that the form and level of bargaining has an important bearing on levels of employee involvement chosen by management. Sub-optimal levels of employee involvement are predicted for firms engaged in workplace level distributive or competitive bargaining. In contrast to earlier tests of the model based on British and German data, findings in this paper (based on the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey) provide little support for the theorised relationships.

A Logit Model of Labour Market Influences on the Choice of Occupation

This paper extends the range of issues considered in other studies of occupational choice by accessing an individual data source containing not only economic but also sociological variables. The model includes a range of labour market variables such as relative earnings and relative demand and slatus, as well as a range of control variables such as perceived and measured aptitudes in the humanities and the sciences, socio-economic background and taste reasons for choosing particular occupational paths. The results are consistent with a human capital approach to occupational choice, and the empirical analysis supports the contention that both labour market and sociological variables are important in the occupational choice process.

Factors Influencing Earnings Differentials Between Male and Female Recent Graduates

T his study adds to the knowledge of earnings differentials between men and women in Australia, by fitting earnings functions to a sample of workers who were first surveyed in 1983 in their first year of university and who then left university, either having dropped out or having obtained a formal tertiary qualification, and wbo supplied work histories in a 1993 follow-up survey. By analysing incomes in full-time jobs on leaving university and then in the full-time jobs four years later; the problem of differing lengths of work experience is avoided. Decompositions of the identified earnings differentials suggest that about half of the differential favouring men of 11.6 per cent in tbe jobs held after four years was explained by higher levels of formal qualification of men and their more favourable occupational distribution. The remain ing 6 per cent of the overall differential could not be explained by the regression analysis. Differences in the extent and quality of on-the-job training, and the resultant differen tial promotional probabilities between men and women, are suggested as one possible explanation for tbe substantial earnings advantage to men in the job held after four years.