Australian labour market and industrial relations policies are poised for fundamental change. A combination of political and macroeconomic factors has created a historic opportunity to turn away from the individualised, market-driven labour market policy that has prevailed since the 1980s, in favour of a more interventionist and egalitarian approach. Factors contributing to this moment include the breakdown of bipartisan consensus around key neoliberal precepts; growing public anger over inequality, insecure work and stagnant wages; and a weakening of macroeconomic conditions. Australia’s labour market is now marked by underutilisation of labour in various forms, a deterioration in job quality (especially the growth of insecure and precarious work) and unprecedented weakness in wages. The deterioration in job quality and distributional outcomes is the long-term legacy of the post-1980s shift away from Australia’s earlier tradition of equality-seeking institutional structures and regulatory practices. The current malaise in labour markets should be confronted with a comprehensive strategy to both increase the quantity of work available to Australian workers and improve its quality. The major components of such a strategy are identified, and their prospects considered, in light of the economic and political forces reshaping Australia’s labour market.

This article aims to set out some progressive, mainly post-Keynesian, macroeconomic policy ideas for debate and further research in the context of macroeconomic challenges faced by South Africa today. Despite some successes, including at reducing poverty, the South African economy has been characterised by low growth, rising unemployment and increasing inequality, which together with rampant corruption and governance failures combine to threaten the very core of the country’s stability and democracy. The neo-liberal economic policies that the African National Congress–led government surprisingly adopted in 1996 in order to assuage global markets sceptical of its historical support for dirigiste economic policy, have simply not worked. Appropriate progressive macroeconomic interventions are urgently needed to head off the looming prospect of a failed state in the country which Nelson Mandela led to democracy after his release from prison in February 1990. What happens in Africa’s southern tip should still matter for progressives all around the world. The article draws on both history and theory to demonstrate the roots of such progressive heterodox economic thinking and support for a more carefully coordinated activist state-led macroeconomic policy, both in general terms and in the South African context. It shows that such approaches to growth and development – far from being populist – also have a rich history and respectable theoretical pedigree behind them and are worthy of inclusion in the South African policy debate.

Employer breaches of New Zealand’s minimum employer standards and other forms of worker exploitation have been increasingly recognised as a significant problem. This affects migrant workers in particular, and among them those working without documentation or on various types of non-resident visas. Exploitation has become particularly embedded in a number of industries: fishing, hospitality and tourism, and in some sectors of agriculture, particularly those dependent on seasonal labour. Initially, government action to mitigate these problems was slow and reluctant but over the last decade, culminating in the reforms of 2016, there has been a more focussed effort to provide a strong legislative framework to support minimum employment standards. This article describes the background to those reforms, analyses the reforms themselves and goes on to consider whether they are adequate to ensure access to justice by disadvantaged workers.

The 2008 economic crisis has had significant impacts on labour markets around the world. In Europe, in particular, the need for internal devaluation within European Union nations in financial difficulty precipitated a wave of labour market reforms alongside the reform of welfare systems struggling to cope with high levels of unemployment. Various analyses have explored the nature of these changes separately for the labour market and welfare systems. Using a conceptual framework rooted in a political economy understanding the social nature of labour, this article takes an inclusive approach to understanding regulatory changes for both employed and unemployed labour. We do this using the case of Ireland, a country that went through a severe economic crisis, was subject to a European Union/European Central Bank/International Monetary Fund bailout in 2010 and witnessed one of the most significant labour market crises in Europe. The Irish case is instructive because it highlights both the range and depth of regulatory interventions utilised by the state during periods of crisis to deal with the social nature of labour and its role under advanced capitalism.

The Hayne Royal Commission into Australian financial sector misbehaviour reported in February 2019. It is, however, unlikely to provide a lasting solution to problems of financial sector misbehaviour. It has identified a number of types of misbehaviour, their ‘proximate causes’ and recommended solutions to those. But, reflecting its limited mandate and limited time, it was unable to investigate the complex question of whether there are more deep-seated, fundamental issues driving financial sector misconduct, both in Australia and globally. This article argues that there are, and that consequently the benefits from the Royal Commission will be relatively short-lived, with misconduct likely to resurface, albeit in different guises.

Despite substantial endeavours of international institutions and governments around the world to promote decent work, recent years have witnessed resurgence of non-standard and precarious labour practices. This article scrutinises one of the most recently described types of non-standard work, which is known as quasi-formal or under-declared employment. Companies relying on this illegitimate strategy, which is particularly prevalent in Europe, deliberately misreport the take-home pay of their formally employed workers. Alongside the officially declared wage, a quasi-formal worker thus receives an additional cash-in-hand payment which remains untaxed. To explore why so many European Union workers accept quasi-formal jobs in spite of obvious limitations, we report the evidence from interviews with 616 workers who were surveyed within the Special Eurobarometer 284/Wave 67.3. A two-level cumulative logistic regression emphasises tax morale and the exact function of the cash-in-hand payment as the key factors in this respect. On the other hand, neither perceived detection risk nor expected penalties are found to affect the readiness of quasi-formal workers to keep obeying an illegitimate arrangement with their employer. These findings therefore endorse recent studies on the matter, which illuminate low trust in the state and fellow citizens as the main reason for many workers to voluntarily misreport their income.

As economies transition from industrial to post-industrial, the types of jobs available and employment conditions change. Research indicates that youth employment has been negatively impacted by these changes. For young people seeking to enter the labour market, particularly those combining employment and study, precarious employment has become the norm. However, precarious employment is, for many, no longer a stepping stone on the path to permanent employment. Many young Australians, even those with higher education qualifications, experience prolonged periods of precarious employment. To examine how new employment landscapes are experienced by young workers, we conduct analysis of data collected by the Life Pattern Project, a longitudinal mixed-methods study. Our results show that precarious employment is related to lower levels of job satisfaction and autonomy in young adulthood.

Internships are prevalent in new media industries and have become the focus of news reports and popular writings in recent years. This article addresses the gap between intern research and digital labour research. It asks: How are these interns working and living? What are the power dynamics behind interns’ experiences? To what extent can digital labour theories be applied to explore these experiences? Based on empirical research conducted at two Chinese Internet companies, this article shows that interns in Chinese Internet industries experience poor working conditions and difficult living conditions. These are caused by power dynamics within the companies, such as tensions between interns and full-time Internet workers, and power dynamics within Chinese society, such as those between Chinese universities and Internet companies involved in these internships. The article argues that such difficult conditions are caused by Internet companies and the Chinese higher education system, both of which engage in forms of coercion and alienation. Digital labour theories need to take greater account of intern labour and of interns’ experiences of precarious work in the new media industries.

This essay is a review of and tribute to the life and contributions of Nina Shapiro, who passed away this year. Shapiro was an American Post-Keynesian economist, who was a bridge figure in radical economics, connecting Marx to Keynes, Schumpeter to Kaldor, the behavior of the firm to the dynamics of the macroeconomy, and the process of innovation to the organization of production and accumulation. She was seminal to important moments in the history of radical economics in the US, including the formation of the Hegel-inspired journal Social Concept in the 1980s and the Rutgers University’s Post-Keynesian circle in the 1980s and 1990s. Shapiro’s deeply philosophical and dialectical approach to firm behavior, innovation, and business cycles led her to theorize the “revolutionary character” of Post-Keynesian economics and to formulate a critique of the competitive neoclassical firm which, she argued, is at odds with the logic of capitalism in which firms seek to make profit and grow.

This article critically examines the relation between work and utility and challenges the mainstream economic view of well-being as a hedonic state for which work is a less pleasurable trade-off. It proposes a conception of work as a potential source of eudaimonic well-being, providing meaning and contributing to human flourishing and self-realisation. Based on micro-level data, the article shows the relevance of distinguishing between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being by way of comparing the effects of increased financial difficulties and deteriorated work conditions on these two types of well-being in five European Union countries – Germany, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK – in the post global financial crisis years between 2009 and 2014. The article concludes by underlining the political importance of addressing aspects pertaining to the quality of working life and of creating jobs that serve to improve the eudaimonic well-being of citizens.

Informed by autonomist perspectives on precarious work and labour subjectivity, this article discusses the dynamics between autonomy and job precarity. Based on purposive sampling, the qualitative findings, drawn from interviews with precarious workers aged 18–29 years in Hong Kong, reveal tensions among four types of aspirations. First, the desire for achieving freedom and individual ambition in work made the respondents critical of the notion of employment-related stability. Second, a determination to break with mainstream career paths empowered young people to take alternative pathways to new modes of work and life. Third, precarious employment was seen as a stepping stone for realising plans for travel or study. Finally, tolerance of precarity was perceived as a transitional stage in their striving for future stability. However, the findings also show the structured dilemmas experienced by young workers regarding the complex relationship between autonomy and precarity in a neoliberal labour market. Some young workers pursued work–life autonomy, constrained by precarious employment relations, acknowledging and bearing the costs, while some strategically used precarity in individual negotiations with employers to realise their goals. This article analyses young workers’ subjectivity through the lenses of autonomy and age and pushes the boundary of precarity studies beyond an implicit dichotomy between determinism and voluntarism.

The rise of wages in China would seem to indicate that the demographic dividend has reached its end. A more refined approach reveals, however, that the situation of Chinese workers has not really improved: even though real wages are rising, the share of wages in the nation’s wealth has not kept pace. The reason for this is China’s position within global value chains, where the employment relationship is not solely governed by the employer–employee power relationship, but by contractual relations established between ‘lead firms’ and subcontractors. This situation echoes labour institutional economist JR Commons’ concept of ‘competitive menace’ and analyses of the structural imbalance of power in the employer/employee relationship. We argue that despite the Chinese government’s desire for industrial upgrading and its intention to develop internal labour markets, Chinese labour institutions have shown significant resistance to change making it hard to envisage any shift towards a Fordist regime of capital accumulation based on a virtuous cycle of mass production and mass consumption.

Although the positive socio-economic effects of remittances for recipient countries in the short term are unmistakable, inflows of remittances may at the same time exert adverse effects on the trade competitiveness of an economy, by appreciating the real exchange rate. This phenomenon is characterised as an instance of the ‘Dutch disease’ – the negative impact of windfall revenue inflows on the competitiveness of other tradable sectors and hence on overall economic growth. While the real effect of workers’ remittances on real exchange rates in a recipient economy is still a controversial issue, several studies have analysed evidence for the existence of the ‘Dutch disease’ phenomenon in various sets of countries. The main objective of this study is to examine whether remittance flows have had any adverse effect on the international trade competitiveness of a selected group of developing countries during the period from 1995 to 2014. Using a one-step system Generalised Method of Moments specification within a simultaneous equation approach, it shows that remittance flows depreciate the real exchange rate at their levels and that the lagged value of remittances create the Dutch disease for this country group. In addition, we confirm that while trade openness and world real interest rates contribute to a depreciation in real exchange rates, gross domestic product per capita and net Official Development Aid inflows tend to appreciate real exchange rates. A policy implication is that trade liberalisation policies that lower tariff rates on capital imports and new export-oriented incentive programmes should be accompanied by measures designed to prevent appreciation in the real exchange rate: steps in this direction such as recent macroeconomic and prudential capital flow management initiatives are briefly referenced.

The ‘Wellbeing Budget’ presented to the New Zealand Parliament in 2019 was widely described as a world-first. This article explores the possibility of a distinctive Australasian contribution to our understanding of wellbeing economics in public policy. The introduction section presents an analytical wellbeing framework showing how human actions draw on services provided by the country’s capital stocks to create and sustain personal and communal wellbeing. The second section chronicles some landmark policy initiatives in Australia and New Zealand for understanding and monitoring wellbeing, culminating in the Wellbeing Budget. The third section highlights four areas for further development: (1) the role of family wellbeing in intergenerational wellbeing, (2) the role of cultural capital in providing foundations for future wellbeing, (3) the role of Indigenous worldviews in enriching understandings of wellbeing and (4) the role of market enterprise in expanding capabilities for wellbeing. These are all areas where Australasian researchers have demonstrated expertise.

Workplace bullying literature has focused mainly on actions of individual targets of mistreatment, undertaken to address the problem, and on analyses of the effectiveness of responses. Less attention has been paid to the efficacy of state regulation in establishing a climate of prevention as well as redress. We examine the role of the Dutch Working Conditions Act as a means of mitigating workplace bullying from the perspective of legislative intention, processes and outcomes. Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in creating, influencing and implementing the Act are analysed thematically to highlight how contextual, employer and phenomenon-specific factors affect the effectiveness of legislation with regard to workplace bullying. The findings indicate that state involvement, organisational commitment and collective action are all important contributors in reducing workplace bullying, but that even in the context of neoliberalism, the role of the nation-state is of critical importance, notwithstanding initiatives by employers.

Judicial interpretation of statute law in common-law countries means that the judiciary may mediate the social impact of legislation. In the case of the protection of labour rights in India, this article examines the extent to which the judiciary acts independently from the government of the day, and the extent to which court judgements are swayed by prevailing administrative policies. Specifically, to what extent have economic liberalisation and labour market flexibility policies influenced court decisions in cases challenging worker dismissals? Drawing on a review of 270 judgements delivered by the Supreme Court of India and the state High Courts between 1950 and 2010, a relationship is traced between a shifting pattern of Courts’ judgements and policy changes initiated by the Indian government in response to economic conditions. The objective of the study is to understand the effect of a structural shift in the economy on the cases of consented and contested decrees related to dismissal of workers under the relevant laws in India. It is found that the specific statute has not greatly changed through legal reforms, but the judiciary’s interpretations of it have changed over six decades based on dominant socio-political currents, in tune with government economic policies. This raises profound questions about judicial independence in defence of labour rights.

Large truck crashes remain a significant problem in the truckload sector of the US motor carrier industry. Employing a unique firm-level data set from a large US truckload motor carrier, we identified two different driver groups hired during two distinct pay regimes. Before-and-after data on wages and safety outcomes created a natural experiment. Higher wages paid to experienced drivers in the new pay regime led to higher driver retention rates. Experienced drivers had lower average crash costs and were more productive during each tenure month. Experienced drivers had a much larger expected discounted net present value when compared with inexperienced drivers. As the previously inexperienced drivers gained additional experience, their crash probabilities and their value began to mirror those of the experienced drivers, demonstrating the value of greater tenure. This research supports ‘safe rates’ public policy because safety pays – for trucking companies, for cargo owners and for society.

This article explores the UK vote in 2016 to exit the European Union, colloquially known as ‘Brexit’. Brexit has been portrayed as a British backlash against globalisation and a desire for a reassertion of sovereignty by the UK as a nation-state. In this context, a vote to leave the European Union has been regarded by its protagonists as a vote to ‘take back control’ to ‘make our own laws’ and ‘let in [only] who we want’. We take a particular interest in the stance of key ‘Brexiteers’ in the UK towards regulation, with the example of the labour market. The article commences by assessing the notion of Brexit as a means to secure further market liberalisation. This analysis is then followed by an account of migration as a key issue, the withdrawal process and likely future trajectory of Brexit. We argue that in contrast to the expectations of those who voted Leave in 2016, the UK as a mid-sized open economy will be a rule-taker and will either remain in the European regulatory orbit, or otherwise drift into the American one.