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Special Streams
Lessons from the past: How historical research aids our understanding of contemporary issues in industrial relations.
This stream invites papers that use historical perspectives and address cases and issues from labour and social history, and management and business history, to enhance understanding of contemporary developments in industrial relations and work.
The stream invites papers that consider:
the impact of industrial upheavals and changing forms of industrial activism and mobilisation
alternative forms of organisation, including changes in union structures, union-community coalitions, social movement activism and co-operatives
historical perspectives on gender, ethnicity and other identities in the workplace
continuities and discontinuities in work organisation and management
the role played by the individual in labour organisation and mobilisation
changing forms of industrial regulation
Stream Organisers:
For better or worse: Women’s work at the high and low ends of the job spectrum
Although still underrepresented in management positions, women have made some in-roads into demanding and well-paid jobs over the past decades. More women than ever have the educational qualifications to take on managerial responsibilities and professional careers– a development that has potentially increased female access to higher wages, job satisfaction, power and reputation. However, managerial and professional careers typically demand long working hours, spatial and temporal flexibility (often at short notice) and generally high levels of commitment, focus and energy. As women seek a fulfilled personal and family life as well as a managerial or professional career, they draw on the services of cleaners, nannies, care workers and other helpers to reconcile the demands of work with their aspirations for life outside it. In so doing, reproductive and representative work, most prominently the care for children and elderly and the running of the household is outsourced, as are social functions such as entertaining. This reproductive and representative work was traditionally seen as ‘the woman’s job’ – and it still is predominately women who work as nannies, cleaners, care workers, wedding planners or in butler services. The work of these women tends to be low paid and/or undertaken in precarious employment relationships with little or no employee rights. Women in these occupations often work freelance or self-employed (or in the unregulated economy), without holiday pay, social insurance or paid maternity/sick leave, and are subject to comparatively volatile and unpredictable demand. Their chances for occupational and career progression are low, as are the possibilities of improving reputation and power, unless they have union backing or other institutional support. The success of women in managerial and professional positions, which is desirable from a societal and gender relations point of view, thus seems to be predicated on a far less positive work and family reality for many female workers.
In our special stream we seek to investigate women’s work at the two ends of the job spectrum and/or the interdependencies between these different spheres of work. Contributions to the stream can be theoretical and/or empirical, nationally specific or provide comparative analysis. The stream convenors also welcome papers from interdisciplinary perspectives. Abstracts for the stream should be between 350-500 words and will be judged on their academic rigour. Abstract contents should enable the referees to determine what issue, development or problem is being investigated, how it is investigated, what the findings are and what contribution is being made to understanding in the field.
It is intended that a selection of papers from this stream will be published in a special issue.
Stream Organisers:
Industrial Relations and Skill
As Australia, New Zealand and countries around the globe rebuild their labour markets in the wake of the GFC, what role can the labour movement and industrial relations academics play in conceptualizing future skill requirements? This question takes on added urgency as ageing workforces, with tacit workplace skills, are replaced by new waves of mobile generically-skilled, IT-literate recruits. Who is being left out in this process? Is employer demand for skill an inevitable reflection of a polarizing ‘service’/ ‘knowledge’ worker divide, or are emerging trends in skill supply and demand a matter of work organization? Following a quarter-century of neo-liberalism and ‘labour market flexibility’, what gaps are emerging in skill supply, ‘quality’, development and recognition? Is the union movement’s skill-based career path agenda dead? What potential is offered by the skill ecosystems movement? Are the skills of women and migrant workers fully recognized and utilized? This proposed stream invites papers on the past, present and future role of IR in skill formation and workforce development systems. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- How skill-creation systems are responding to the economic crisis and demographic shifts;
- Global mobility of skilled workers and implications for industrial organisation
- Innovations in skill development, skill recognition and skill-based career paths;
- The debate over skills in a service economy and relationships amongst technology, work organization and skill
- Recognition and embedding of so-called ‘soft’ skills – generic, employability skills, and graduate attributes – in qualification structures and assessment mechanisms
- Skills policy – is the ‘high road’ achievable? National developments, skill ecosystems, and the role of the labour movement .
It is intended that selected papers from this stream will be published in a special issue of The Economic and Labour Relations Review in 2010.
'Good jobs, bad jobs: what and where are they, and what can make bad jobs better'
This stream invites papers which explore what makes a good job, what makes a bad job and how jobs can be regulated or managed to improve their quality. Of course what makes a job good or bad is in the eye of the beholder, but existing literature suggests that voice, dignity, safety, security of pay, time and tenure, opportunity for challenge, development and contribution as well as the alignment of personal preferences and skills with job characteristics can all contribute to making 'good jobs'. The nature of employment regulation is clearly critical to the quality of jobs, as is its enforcement and supervision. In addition, the quality and nature of both management and employee representation (through unions or other mechanisms) shapes the quality of jobs and their outcomes for workers. The distribution and characteristics of good and bad jobs, and their potential for transformation, as with most characteristics of the labour market, is gendered.
This stream invites papers that make theoretical and/or empirical contributions to a discussion of good jobs, bad jobs and making bad jobs better. Papers exploring these themes within or across particular countries and/or industries are invited, as well as contributions which focus upon regulation, enforcement, the youth labour market, union strategies, management approaches or gender or other relevant issues. Papers from new scholars are particularly encouraged. Papers submitted to this stream will be considered for a special edition of the Journal of Industrial Relations to be published in 2011.
Stream Organisers:
Chris Warhurst (chris.warhurst@strath.ac.uk)
Unions and community: Strategies for revitalisation and social change
Union and community coalition building is an old strategy, but it is a critical part of recent union revitalisation. Embedded in coalition building as a strategy are conflicting ideas about the political purpose of unions, the preferred and actual relationships that exist with other organisations, the challenges and promises of collaboration, tensions between community relationships and relationships with social democratic parties, and the kind of social vision that unions need for responding to a climate of crisis and declining membership. Papers are sought that canvass scholarly reflection mixed with presentations from key practitioners in Australia and beyond.
Stream organisers:
Peter Fairbrother (peter.fairbrother@rmit.edu.au)
Amanda Tattersall (atattersall@sydneyalliance.org.au)
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