Table 4 - uploaded by David Robert Peetz
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
Context in source publication
Context 1
... reason why ordinary AWA employees were less satisfied with their control over working hours is that they were more likely to be working longer hours than the control group. This is apparent in Table 4, which shows data for full-time employees as well as all employees (as an increase in hours amongst part-time employees would be considered a good thing by many of them). ...
Similar publications
Citations
... Such treatment often tend to be a result of the identifiable HR practices that are products of Western societies (Robert & Wasti, 2002), and are utilized in modern organization that emphasize individualistic rather than collectivistic values (Erez, 1994). There are a number of reasons to believe that there is a significant link between the individualization of employment relations practices by organizations and decline in union membership (for a review, see the studies of Deery & Walsh, 1997, 1999Peetz, 2004;& Storey & Bacon, 1993). Etzioni (1961) suggests that an individual's motives for joining a union are related to strategies of organizations for ensuring the compliance of their members. ...
Drawing on data from a survey of 342 employees from three BPO organizations in Mumbai (India), this study examined whether
cultural variables of individual cultural orientation and organizational culture, and their interaction were predictive of
employees’ attitudes toward union membership in BPO organizations in India where unionization has hitherto not taken place.
Using regression analysis, the researcher found that over and above the effects of demographic and job-related variable, and
work stress and job satisfaction, horizontal individualism could predict union attitudes significantly and negatively whereas
vertical individualism and collectivism could predict the attitudes significantly and positively. Similarly, organizational
collectivism could predict employees’ attitudes toward union membership significantly and negatively. Using the univariate
analysis of variance, the researcher found that the contrast between personal value and organizational culture of an individualist
working in a collectivistic organizational culture or collectivist working in an individualistic culture are found to have
stronger influence on union attitudes compared to the congruence of an individualist working in an individualistic culture
or collectivist working in a collectivistic culture. The results and implications of findings are discussed in the paper with
reference to the literature on role of cultural and attitudinal variables in relation to organizational outcomes like union
membership.
From 1996 until its electoral defeat in 2007, Australia’s conservative national government prosecuted what can be called a neo-liberal agenda across a range of fields including industrial relations, as well as in welfare and the economy more generally. Couched in terms of ‘choice’, ‘deregulation’ and, more broadly, a reduction in state activity, this programme actually involved new forms of state intervention and high levels of legislative prescription, just as it did in other countries (see Harvey 2005 for an overview of this political strategy). As Polanyi (1944: 45) famously observed: ‘there was nothing natural about laissez faire’ in the making of market economies, nor was there in their remaking with the collapse of Keynesianism in so many counties from the 1980s onwards. In the Australian case, changes in industrial relations followed persistent lobbying by some local and global business interests which had grown increasingly opposed to collective bargaining. The government joined them in insisting that unions had no place in a globalised and services-based economy. The Work Choices laws of 2005, which built on legislative changes of 1996 and judicial interventions thereafter, rendered the rights of workers to freedom of association all but meaningless and undermined effective collective bargaining wherever employers chose to act on the laws.
This article introduces a typology of the reasons underlying the decision of employers to pursue Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), drawing on case-study findings and a review of secondary literature and case law. Three key reasons are identified: to foster positive employee relations; to avoid the influence of unions in the workplace; and, to reduce labour costs. These reasons appear somewhat at odds with the rhetoric surrounding the 1996 federal legislation that introduced AWAs, which stressed the expansion of choice for both employers and employees. The article uses the typology in order to develop a discussion of the varied types of AWAs. Despite the apparent lack of choice for employees in relation to whether their employment is covered by an A WA, it is contended that not all AWAs are used for purposes that are detrimental to employees. However, given the increasing evidence of instances where AWAs are providing detrimental outcomes for employees, there is a clear need for legislative reform of the AWA provisions.
Assesses the impact of the federal Workchoices legislation, including under the headings of: coverage; limits to the impact of WorkChoices; Australian Workplace Agreements and conditions of employment; unfair dismissal provisions; non-union collective agreements, employer greenfields agreements and conditions of employment; wage rates under individual and collective agreements; wage increases under different agreement types and the AFPC; wages growth and profits; women and the gender pay gap; employment; economy and productivity; industrial disputes. (INCLUDES EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.)
Following 13 years of Labor government at the Federal level a Liberal/National Party Coalition government was elected to office in the Australian general election of 1996. This government was subsequently re-elected in 1998, 2001, and again in 2004, before finally losing power in the 2007 Federal election. Industrial relations and labour law policy were critical aspects of the Coalition’s political and social platform throughout its entire period of office and in pursuance of these policies the government introduced many significant changes to employment relations legislation. These were more than changes of detail, representing fundamental shifts in the distribution of power between the parties to employment relations, and in the means of determining terms and conditions of employment. This report is designed to provide a summary and review of research published over the period 1997-2008 on the impact of the reforms to employment relations legislation which occurred during that period. The report is not a legal analysis per se, although the work does include some published studies carried out by labour lawyers. Rather, the main aim of the report is to assess what practical impact the Coalition’s legislative programme had upon various aspects of labour market and employment relations institutions, arrangements and behaviour; an assessment, then, not of why and how the law changed in a technical sense, but of the consequences and outcomes of legal change. The report also aims to say something about the nature of research in this area, and some of the disciplinary difficulties associated with it.
We examine wages in Australia under federally registered individual contracts and collective agreements (CAs) using unpublished data from a national earnings survey. The distribution of earnings under registered individual contracts was more unequal than under CAs. Average and median earnings under registered individual contracts were lower than under CAs. There was little evidence that individual contracting raised wages through raising productivity. The link between contracting and pay appears contingent, varying between occupations, industries, and firm size bands and dependent upon employees' position in the labour market and employers' use of union avoidance strategies. This has implications for the interpretation of studies of union wage effects. Yes Yes
For nearly 12 years from 1996, the Australian government pursued a neoliberal industrial relations agenda, seeking to break with structures based on collective bargaining and trade unions. In the name of choice and deregulation, this agenda involved unique levels of state intervention and prescription - and anti-unionism. In the last round of legislative change, the 2005 laws badged as Work Choices, the government overreached itself and in 2007 was defeated in a general election. As in the UK after Thatcher, the extent to which collective bargaining can be restored and trade unions regain a voice is problematical. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2008.
