351 research outputs found
Individual Contracts, Collective Bargaining, Wages and Power
No full textThis paper by David Peetz considers the evidence on the impact of individual contracts and collective bargaining on outcomes such as pay and conditions for employees and the implications for the distribution of power
Essential service unionism and the new police industrial relations
Get PDFWe examine how an Australian police union boasting over 99 per cent density has resisted the trend of decline. The union historically eschewed arbitration and instead used political connections to achieve goals. The environment radically changed with a major corruption report and the introduction of new managerialist techniques. The union reconfigured relationships with management and government but still made use of political action to secure instrumental gains. It has structures and practices that promote perceptions of responsiveness. The union's support base is built on the foundation of a well-administered legal defence fund. Membership propensity is also a function of the union's general protective functions, its ability to secure benefits and a perception of union democracy. The implications for understanding essential service unionism relate to the political sensitivity of essential services, the nature of risk facing essential service employees, cultural aspects of essential service work as well as some implications common to all unions.Full Tex
Are Australian trade unions part of the solution, or part of the problem?
No full textThe failure of the modern economy to deliver widespread benefits for all is now widely recognised. Ordinary workers—those in the middle and lower parts of the income distribution—have limited access to resources and even more limited effective say. It was not ever thus, and the decline of unions is intimately connected with the rise of inequality. Can unions rise again? What would they need to do—and be, asks David Peetz in the Australian Review of Public Affairs.
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Are Australian trade unions part of the solution, or part of the problem?
No full textTo answer the question in the title, we must first identify ‘the problem’? The following
sections of this article then ask: How have Australian unions contributed to the
solution in the past? How are they now part of the problem? And how can they now
be part of the solution? In doing this, David Peetz seeks to bring together research by various
people (including himself) over the best part of two decades about the past and
present of unions, to help us understand whether they have a future.Griffith Business School, Dept of Employment Relations and Human ResourcesFull Tex
What determines coverage of collective agreements and awards?
No full textWage setting in Australia features a complex system of interdependencies between awards, collective agreements (CAs) and individual arrangements (IAs). How an employee comes to have their pay and conditions set has long been the subject of close study. In the context of recent declines in collective agreement coverage, the purpose of this article is to examine the influence of employee and employer characteristics on collective agreement coverage. The causes of that decline are not the topic of this paper, but the determinants of collective agreement coverage are, because of the substantial effects it has. Collective bargaining is commonly a way by which employees boost their power in order to obtain higher pay and better conditions and better treatment at work and is a mechanism by which wage inequality is reduced (Jackson, A and Schellenberg, 1999; Peetz, 2006; International Labour Office, 2016). Understanding the factors that encourage it can facilitate our understanding of the factors shaping those outcomes.Full Tex
Discourses on Violence in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua: Youth, Crime, and the Responses of the State
Get PDFThe paper analyzes the social construction of youth violence in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and El Salvador on the one hand, and the related security policies of the three states, on the other. In each country, there is an idiosyncratic way of constructing youth violence and juvenile delinquency. Also, each country has its own manner of reaction to those problems. In El Salvador youths are socially constructed as a threat to security, and the state implements predominantly repressive policies to protect citizens against that threat. In Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where the social discourse on youth violence is less prominent, the state's policies are neither very accentuated nor very coherent, whether in terms of repressive or nonrepressive measures. There are strong relations and mutual influences between the public's fear (or disregard) of youth violence and the state's policies to reduce it.Central America, youth violence, security policies, discourse analysis
Brave New Workplace: How Individual Contracts are Changing our Jobs
No full textThe push for individual contracts for employees overturns a century of collective efforts to create basic rights and a 'fair go' in Australian workplaces. David Peetz delves underneath the layers of corporate and government doublespeak that surround this most heated issue to uncover what is really happening in relations between employers and employees. He explains who benefits from individual contracts and who doesn't, and how this will change the way we work. He locates individual workplace contracts in a wider debate about whether we are moving away from collective ideals towards individualistic values. From offices to shops, schools, hospitals and mines, individual contracting affects every single employee in Australia. Brave New Workplace is compelling reading for anyone who wants to understand the brave new world of work.Griffith Business School, Dept of Employment Relations and Human ResourcesNo Full Tex
Turnover intentions, training and motivations among Australian union staff
No full textStaff loss and demotivation can be costly for unions. In this article the authors investigate factors influencing expected voluntary turnover, that is Intention to Leave (ITL), of union employees by conducting an online survey of 160 staff in three Australian unions. Moderated multiple regression analyses revealed that perceived organisational support, shortcomings in training and unmet intrinsic needs predicted ITL, after controlling for burnout, labour market mobility and intrinsic motivations. Critically, the results suggest an interaction effect involving training in some circumstances. Training buffered the impact of low support on ITL, however the adverse effect on ITL of organisational failure to meet staff expectations regarding service to members remained, independent of training. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, including the separate significance of resources and purpose.Full Tex
Ageing Australian unions and the ‘youth problem’
No full textTrade union membership, both in aggregate numbers and in density, has declined in the majority of advanced economies globally over recent decades (Blanchflower, 2007). In Australia, the decline in the 1990s was somewhat more precipitate than in most countries (Peetz, 1998). As discussed in Chapter 1, reasons for the decline are multifactorial, including a more hostile environment to unionism created by employers and the state, difficulties ·with workplace union organisation, and structural change in the economy (Bryson and Gomez, 2005; Bryson et a!., 2011; Ebbinghaus et al., 2011; Payne, 1989; Waddington and Kerr, 2002; Waddington and Whitson, 1997). Our purpose in this chapter is to look beyond aggregate Australian union density data, to examine how age relates to membership decline, and how different age groups, particularly younger workers, are located in the story of union decline. The practical implications of this research are that understanding how unions relate to workers of different age groups, and to workers of different genders amongst those age groups, may lead to improved recruitment and better union organisation
The Realities and Futures of Work
No full textWhat do we know about the current realities of work and its likely futures? What choices must we make and how will they affect those futures? Many books about the future of work start by talking about the latest technology, and focus on how technology is going to change the way we work. And there is no doubt that technology will have huge impacts. However, to really understand the direction in which work is going, and the impact that technology and other forces will have, we need to first understand where we are.
This book covers topics ranging from the ‘mega-drivers of change’ at work, power, globalisation and financialisation, to management, workers, digitalisation, the gig economy, gender, climate change, regulation and deregulation. In doing this, it refers to some of the great works of science fiction. It demolishes several myths, such as that the employment relationship is doomed, that we are all heading to becoming ‘freelancers’ or ‘gig workers’ one day, that most jobs will be destroyed by technological change, that the growth in jobs will mainly be in STEM fields, that we will no longer value collectivism as we will all be ‘individuals’, or that the death of unionism is inevitable.
The Realities and Futures of Work also rejects the idea of technological determinism—that whatever will be, will be, thanks to technological change—and so it refuses to accept that we simply need to prepare to adapt ourselves to the future by judicious training since there is nothing else we can do about it. Instead, this book provides a realistic basis for thinking about both the present and the future. It emphasises the choices we make, and the implications of those choices for the future of work
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