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Retrenchment and Labour Market Flows in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Iain Campbell  and
Michael Webber
Iain Campbell
Affiliation:
National Key Centre in Industrial Relations, Monash University
Michael Webber
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne
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Abstract

Retrenchment is a significant element of current labour restructuring in Australia. This article situates retrenchment and the experiences of retrenchees since the late 1980s within a broader context of labour market flows. The article refers to labour flows at the level of the individual enterprise but it concentrates on the aggregate level ofthe national economy, drawing mainly on official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data. It points to several important factors that are neglected in contemporary discussion of the experience of retrenchment — the effects of periods of job expansion and job contraction, industry patterns of retrenchment and labour turnover, enterprise-level retrenchment and recruitment practices, and the place of ‘precarious’ employment as an increasingly significant point of departure and destination in labour flows.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , June 1996 , pp. 88 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1996

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