Gordon Anderson

Flexibility, Casualization and Externalization in the New Zealand workforce

The New Zealand Employment Contracts Act was introduced in 1991 to make the labour market more flexible. However, it is far from clear that the New Zealand labour market was inflexible. This paper represents the results of a survey of employers which was conducted when the Employment Contracts Act was conting into effect. The paper finds that the labour market was not inflexible and that employers had been able to successfully casualize and externalize labour under the pre-existirzg legal environment. The study finds further that the employer pursuit of flexibility was not part of an unrelenting drive to achieve new forms of work but was, in general, an opportunistic reaction to recession. Furthermore, employers anticipate that growth in employment, when it comes, will be in perma nent full-time jobs rather than in casual or externalized employment.

The Changing Role of the State: Regulating Work in Australia and New Zealand 1788-2007

The state has played a conspicuous role in the history of labour in Australia and New Zealand both as a focus for struggles and where the labour movement achieved a degree of influence that garnered the interest of progressives in other countries. The state is a complex institution and its relationship to labour has been equally complex, especially when the differential impacts on particular groups, such as women, are considered. This article traces state regulation of work arrangements (broadly defined) in both countries over the period of European presence. Although there are significant similarities, a number of differences are identified. We also indicate how recent research and debate on the historiography of the state can provide new insights.

The Good Employer: The Image and the Reality

This paper considers the good employer from both an HRM perspective and a legal perspective emphasising the inter-relationship between HRM and the law. While the paper focuses on New Zealand’s particular experience with a legislative conceptualisation of the good employer it also has a general application as the problems it addresses are applicable to employers generally, all of whom to a greater or lesser extent seek to project a “good employer” brand. The paper begins by considering the notion of a good employer first from an HRM and then a legal perspective and suggests that the theory of instrumental decentred regulation assists in explaining a relationship between the law and HRM: legal obligations imposed on employers have led to self-regulation through the development of HRM policies which in turn have helped the law develop its own concept of what constitutes a good employer. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of New Zealand’s statutory model of the good employer. This paper was presented at the 16th ILERA World Congress as part of a Panel “The Good Employer - A Basic Building Block for Global Worker Rights.” The other participants were Prof Ellen Dannin, Penn State, Associate Professor John Howell, University of Melbourne, Professor John Budd, University of Minnesota, and Professor Gregor Murray, Universite de Montreal. References to papers by those panel members can be found in the paper.

Labour Law in a Globalising World

At the opening of the 21st century it is clear that increasing globalisation will remain one of the most important long term influences on the evolution of the international economy and international political structures. The controversial nature of globalisation is self-evident from the increasing intensity of antiglobalisation demonstrations at meetings of international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation. While the actual nature of globalisation, the direction in which it will take the world and the costs and benefits that will result are still contestable, it is clear that the main, and certainly the most effective, drivers are economic. Nations are primarily concerned to set in place structures that promote the free movement of capital including the freedom of multinational companies to locate and relocate around the world, and to promote free trade in goods and services. While non-economic values such as environmental protection and social and labour rights are not excluded from the debates setting these structures in place, they are largely marginal to it. One symbol of this marginalisation is that the ILO, unlike the World Bank, IMF and OECD, does not enjoy observer status at the WTO in spite of the rhetoric of concern for such rights from member states of the Organisation. As McCrudden and Davies explain,1 this exclusion is the result of a major and continuing division between developed and developing countries within the WTO that in the 1990s prevented agreement on any tangible measures in the Marrakesh agreements and that has continued to block subsequent progress. The stark divisions between these groups became even more apparent at the Singapore Ministerial meeting in 1996 when an invitation to the head of the ILO to speak was withdrawn. The only tangible result was a weak statement to the effect that members agreed that labour standards should be upheld but that this should be done through the ILO and not the WTO. The suspicion of developing countries that any link between trade and labour standards will lead to increased protectionism is almost certainly justified. Experience within the WTO to date provides little reason for developing countries to have any great faith in the undertakings of the developed world. Developing countries have seen the promises of movement toward freer trade that might benefit them fade into the distance while at the same time the undertakings they entered into are increasingly used to their disadvantage.2

Book Reviews : A NEW PROVINCE FOR LEGALISM: LEGAL ISSUES AND THE DEREGULATION OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS Edited by Paul Ronfeldt and Ron McCallum. ACIRRT Monograph no. 9, University of Sydney, 1993, v + 153 pp.,

Divergent Patlrs? does not provide an answer to the question suggested in its title. This would have required an overarching chapter that examined the evidence presented in each paper with a view to defining the directions of change in industrial relationships in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region. It is almost a tradition that the editors of collections of AIRAANZ papers do not provide

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This paper outlines the provisions of the Labour Relations Act 1987 that relate to the lawfulness of strike action and the remedies available in the case of unlawful strikes. The decisions of the Labour Cozut to date in relation to those remedies are then discussed, in particular the recent decision of the Full Court in the New Zealand Harbours IUW case.