A growing trend in work organisation in Australia is for firms to outsource many activities that had been previously performed in-house. Outsourcing these activities, it is argued, will free up human and capital resources as well as allow for increased flexibility in the way labour is employed. Although the extent of outsourcing and other approaches to flexibility have been well documented in Australia, little attempt has been made to evaluate such practices. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing research and to evaluate the effect of outsourcing on firm performance and employee commitment. The research findings, which are based on four manufacturing companies, shows that employee commitment among contractor employees is generally high, although the economic benefits to the firm may take several years to realise.

Data from the two rounds of the Australian Workplace Relations Survey conducted in 1989/90 and 1995 are used to examine the extent of growth in outsourced labour (or contracting out), the characteristics of workplaces which are intensive users of outsourced labour, and the sources of growth in contractor-based employment. A key conclusion reached is that growth in the incidence of outsourcing is not a function of employment growth being most rapid in those types of firms and industries which have traditionally used contractors, but instead has taken place across a wide range of workplaces.

Maternity rights in the UK have from the outset aroused controversy on account of their intricacy and failure to apply to all working women. This article charts the historical development of such rights and highlights in particular the influence of European Union law in widening their ambit. It also sets out the current statutory provisions and describes how case law has at the same time compounded the problems of complexity and attempted to construe the legislation in a purposive manner. The article concludes by noting recent legislative changes and assessing their potential to resolve the existing problems as well as their effect on bringing the UK into line with its European Union partners.

In 1998, a private member’s Bill, the Paid Parental Leave Bill, was introduced into the New Zealand Parliament. Although it was subsequently defeated, the Bill stimulated debate over paid parental leave in both New Zealand and Australia - two countries conspicuous in international terms for their lack of such provisions. It showed that a progressive approach could be devised to fit the New Zealand context, and raised hopes that increasing political pressure would stimulate a move towards extension of parental rights in the Antipodes. Ultimately, the Bill proved too much of a challenge within the present New Zealand system, and the potential for change was confounded by lack of political support. However, future political compromises around the issue of paid parental leave remain a possibility in the volatile New Zealand political system.

Outsourcing is very much part of the neo-liberal agenda for the public sector. The rationale for transferring the provision of goods and services, traditionally the responsibility of governments to private enterprise lies in the perception of public sector inefficiency and the philosophy that reducing the role of government, is essential for the optimal performance of the economy. While the impact of outsourcing is not always easy to isolate given its coexistence with a variety of complementary neo-liberal strategies such as legislative attacks on trade unions, there is strong evidence to suggest that it has contributed significantly to the reduction of employment, wages and working conditions. This has occurred both as functions are transferred to the less regulated private sector and as those left in government employment are subjected to the impact of ongoing financial stringency in their struggle to compete with the private sector and hold on to their jobs.

This paper analyses the International Labour Organisation’s recent review of its Maternity Protection Convention (No. 103) and Recommendation (No. 95) from a feminist perspective, arguing the need for more comprehensive provisions in a revised convention. It also evaluates the provision of maternity rights in Australia, the Australian government’s position in relation to the ILO convention, and the capacity for international standards to extend maternity rights in this country. It argues that federal law reform is necessary to strengthen women’s maternity rights at work, and notes the importance of ratification of ILO 103 to such an agenda. However, the author is somewhat pessimistic about the immediate prospects both for the extension of standards in ILO provisions, and for substantial progress on maternity rights in Australia.

Academic and policy discourse about Competitive Tendering and Contracting (CTC) derives its intellectual legitimacy from the theory of contestable markets. Applying contestability to CTC implies that efficiency gains generated through the initial open tender are repeated at successive stages of tendering. This paper presents a theoretically and pragmatically grounded critique of the application of this theory to CTC by focusing on the Re-Opened Tender (ROT) stage. Working within the neo-classical economic paradigm, contestability will be shown to be constrained at ROT, resulting in the most inefficient and worst possible welfare outcome for the buyer.

The trend towards outsourcing maintenance functions to labour hire firms raises questions about the capacity of unions to maintain membership levels and employment standards amongst an increasingly casualised labour hire workforce. The Victorian manufacturing maintenance sector has experienced substantial outsourcing to labour hire firms, but unions in this sector have maintained membership levels and established enterprise agreements to govern employment of labour hire workers. In 1997, labour hire workers in this sector struck for almost 7 weeks in support of a wage claim. This paper outlines the nature of employment regulation of labour hire firms in Victorian manufacturing maintenance and the factors leading to the 1997 dispute. It analyses how the union organised industrial action and how the employers responded. The conclusion explores some questions about collective action by labour hire workers, and highlights some problems of dispute resolution under the current regulatory regime.

‘Family-friendly’ policies have recently gained a high profile in Australia, featuring increasingly in political rhetoric, company policies, industrial provisions and human resource management discourse. While initiatives to enhance the combination of work and family responsibilities may make relatively minor contributions to equal employment opportunity efforts, they do bring into consideration some of the broader social impediments to gender equity in paid employment. Some assessment of their accessibility and impact is therefore warranted. In this paper we examine the distribution of work and family provisions in the Australian labour market, and provide an assessment of their implementation in selected organisations. Our findings indicate that access to work and family provisions is uneven across the Australian labour market, particularly in the private sector; and suggest that even where provision is exemplary, the impact is at best moderate.

This paper provides some analysis of microeconomic criteria for the regulation of union - employer wage bargaining in the context of a decentralised wage determination system. Using a simple model, where the employer has monopoly power in the product market, it is shown that an efficient collusive bargain struck between union and employer will benefit the consumer. This result holds under quite weak assumptions about the objectives of the union. Under not unreasonable assumptions about the nature of union objectives, the collusive bargaining outcome will be better for the consumer them removing the monopoly power of the employer while the monopoly power of the union remains. The implication for wages policy is that rather than proscribe collusive bargaining between a union and an employer with monopoly power, regulation should assist such bargaining as there are social benefits.

The paper has two main objects. The first is to discuss the nature of (economic) globalisation and the extent to which it can be considered an exogenous development. Globalisation since 1970 is contrasted with that in the 19th century. It is argued that the current experience of globalisation is simply the international manifestation of the swing towards neoliberal policies of market oriented reform that hag taken throughout the world since 1970. The second object is to consider the relationship, if my, of globalisation to the increase in inequality evident in a number of developed countries. It is argued that increased inequality is the result of the neoliberal reform program as a whole and that the role of globalisation per se has been overstated.

Labour market programs are time honoured microeconomic policies, which offer different solutions to different policy makers. Some advocate them to moderate wage inflation and thus complement macroeconomic demand expansion. For others, they are advanced as a second-best, but politically feasible, substitute for reducing real wages. For many, they are regarded as an equity measure to assist the very long-term unemployed. All these goals are macroeconomic, for the policy maker is interested in the number and type of people displaced from employment as a result of the labour market programs. However, despite this, the macroeconomic field of labour market program evaluations is surprisingly thin. Few direct measures exist in Australia and overseas on the aggregate employment effects of such programs and the inference from related works finds little consistent evidence that they increase aggregate employment. Furthermore, there is a lack of macroeconomic assessments of the equity effects.

Drawing on lessons learnt from an analysis of why Australia was not subject to the same degree of contagion from the Asian crisis as were our near neighbours, this paper looks at what elements of reform to the international economic architecture are desirable and why. These include: wider representation in the economic councils of the world, in part to give more legitimacy to the rules of the game; bailing in the private sector both for equity reasons and to reduce moral hazard as well as to contribute to solving the immediate problem; far reaching prudential rules e.g. restrictions on banks’ short term borrowing and on foreign currency denominated borrowing; the possibility of controls on short term capital inflow; and greater transparency with increased disclosure by all major participants including hedge funds.

Previous research reveals that failure to resolve intra-union conflict may lead to the emergence of breakaways. Drawing on evidence from the Australian entertainment industry, this study examines the more unusual case of an attempt to secede by elements of the leadership (rather than membership) from the Australian Theatrical and Amusement Employees Association. Following secession, the breakaway group merged with a different union. The paper argues that the country’s system of industrial relations shaped the form of the breakaway and ultimately provided the legal vehicle for the disaffected group to split from its parent union. It further shows how union breakaways are not necessarily caused by union merger activity although it often appears that they are.

The argument that there exist a causal link between national savings and current account deficits is often simplistically formulated in terms of national income accounting identities. However the validity of formulating national saving-argmenting policies to target current account deficits is open to much debate when the possible theoretical linkages between these aggregates are investigated more closely. In particular; if the adjustment mechanism to external balance is expenditure driven rather than relying on exchange rate induced relative price changes, the alternative case of interventionist policy to promote net exports is strengthened. Theoretical arguments opposing the use of interventionist trade policies are often derived form inappropriately constructed, or simplistically interpreted, economic models.

Labour market ‘deregulation’ is a major economic policy issue in Australia. Some of the desire for deregulation has been part of a worldwide trend in OECD countries whilst some comes from more localised disquiet about the alleged effect of Australia’s industrial relations institutions on the economy. This article looks at the evidence em Australian labour market regulation and its relation to economic performance. The article finds that Australian labour market institutions have had little effect on efficiency but have provided important distributional outcomes. Furthermore it is argued that with ‘globalisation’ there is more reason to continue labour market protection not less to enhance Australia’s capacity to trade and invest in the global economy.