Sarah Oxenbridge

Inside the workplace : findings from the 2004 workplace employment relations survey

1. Introduction 2. A Profile of Workplaces and Employees 3. The Management of Employment Relations 4. Recruiting, Training and Work Organization 5. Representation, Consultation and Communication 6. Employee Representatives 7. The Determination of Pay and other Terms and Conditions 8. Workplace Conflict 9. Equality, Diversity and Work-Life Balance 10. Workplace Climate and Performance 11. Summary and Conclusions

The Employment Contract: From Collective Procedures to Individual Rights

The article analyses the institutional basis and form of the employment contract in Britain using the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. It assesses the extent to which collective bargaining still regulates pay and non-pay aspects of employment. The paper shows that while collective procedures have declined in importance, there has been an increase in legal governance of the employment relationship. Logistic regression analysis establishes that both contractual formalisation and legal compliance are greater in larger organisations and where trade unions are present. Trade union activity is also associated with superior fringe benefits. Collective bargaining thus appears to facilitate both access to and improvement on statutory rights.

The two faces of partnership

The paper examines the context and characteristics of partnership arrangements currently emerging between employers and unions at the workplace level in Britain. Case studies of 11 firms involving interviews with managers and trade union officials revealed two broad types of arrangement. Those in production sector firms nurtured collective bargaining through informal partnership relationships, while those in the private service sector contained collective bargaining tightly through formalised partnership agreements. We analyse the pressures that underlie relationships, the net benefits to the parties, the scope of relationships, and employer strategies for restricting union influence. A key finding is that partnership relationships can be characterised by a “continuum” of union involvement in the workplace, with unions having greater rights where they have informal relationships backed up with high levels of workforce unionisation.

The relationship between payment systems, work intensification and health and safety outcomes: a study of hotel room attendants

Abstract This paper examines the impact of payment systems on workers’ exposure to body-stressing injuries. Data are drawn from interviews with managers and focus groups of room attendants in Australian luxury hotels. We find that the most important factor predicting work-related bodily injury is the payment system. Payment on the basis of the number of rooms cleaned (piece rates) was found to result in task ‘speed-up’. The capacity to earn a living wage was therefore reliant on work intensification, leading to the use of unsafe working methods and injury. By contrast, attendants paid an hourly wage worked at a slower pace, earned a living wage and sustained fewer, if any, injuries. Mediating factors include the shift towards the contracting-out of housekeeping services to labour hire agencies, which typically pay on a per room basis, and their preference for employing migrant workers on temporary work visas. The paper concludes by considering regulatory strategies that might be used to reduce the incidence of work-related injuries among room attendants and workers subject to similar modes of employment in other sectors.

A comparative analysis of restructuring employment relationships in Qantas and Aer Lingus: different routes, similar destinations

This paper examines the experiences of Qantas and Aer Lingus. The two companies have a shared history as national, ‘legacy’ (full-service) carriers and strategically important, ‘benevolent’ employers. More recently, both airlines have been forced to change in the face of competition from low cost carriers (LCCs) and external threats to their existence. In this paper, we examine how the two airlines have reacted to these pressures. We look at the role played by institutional frameworks and competitive circumstances in determining industrial relations strategies. The entry of LCCs and changes (or potential changes) to ownership structures through privatization and takeover bids have led to downward pressure on pay and conditions at both airlines. Accordingly, a key issue considered is whether a collectivist model of employment relations can survive in the face of low cost competition.

Survey errors and survey costs: a response to Timming's critique of the Survey of Employees Questionnaire in WERS 2004

A recent article in this journal provided a critique of the design of the Survey of Employees Questionnaire within the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. The principal criticisms concerned the use of vague response categories, double-barrelled questions, needless ordinal measurements and the use of multiple binary items in place of ordinal or scalar measures. The critique highlighted some areas worthy of attention but we argue that, in other areas, it took insufficient account of the survey’s core objectives and of the practical and financial constraints guiding its design. We offer a broader assessment of sources of error within the WERS 2004 Survey of Employees.