Santina Bertone

Multiculturalism as a Conservative Ideology: Impacts on Workforce Diversity

This paper is critical of Australian multicultural policy and the way it has been applied to the workplace. It also questions the likely impact of recent government policy relating to asylum seekers and multiculturalism on diversity management generally. The paper argues that multicultural policy was never intended to challenge existing power relations between ethnic groups, but rather it entrenched the superiority of one dominant group within an Anglo, male-centred middle-class framework. However, past government policies were less hostile towards minority cultures and groups than the present. Current developments in Australian race relations lead the authors to pose a number of major research principles and questions. These questions flow out of recent case study research and perceived research gaps related to that work.

Immigrant workers and trade unions

The central thrust of this study has been to examine the various dimensions of the relationship between trade unions and their NESB (non-English speaking background) members and to analyse the perceptions of this relationship, and of each other, held by both parties. The existing level of knowledge on the relationship is brought together in a review of the literature in Chapter 1. This review highlights both the relative paucity of material and its dated nature. Further, most publications were based on limited or no research but rather relied on the views and opinions either of individuals or of union activists. Accordingly, the review focused mainly on a limited number of significant studies. The arguments and findings of these studies were then fused with the contentions of the activist-based material to identify for analysis the major elements of the relationship between unions and their NESB members. Some elements of this relationship could be tested factually, for example, the level and extent of special union services targeted to NESB members. Others necessitated a mixture of qualitative and quantitative testing.

Immigrant workers and Australian trade unions: participation and attitudes

Most studies of unionized, immigrant workers have argued mat such workers have lower levels of participation in and hold different attitudes toward their unions than do nonimmigrant union members. Drawing on a questionnaire survey of members of six Australian trade unions, this article questions this consensus. We argue mat country of origin – in particular whether the union member was born in a non-English-speaking or an English-speaking country – does not, of itself, lead to different levels of union participation or different union attitudes. A closely related variable, the level of English language ability, does influence some elements of particpation and attitudes.