ORCID Profile
0000-0003-0828-9446
Current Organisation
University of Sydney
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Labour Law | Industrial Relations | Law |
Industrial Relations | Expanding Knowledge in Law and Legal Studies | Law Enforcement
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 15-04-2023
DOI: 10.1111/IREL.12333
Abstract: This article offers the first systematic review of empirical research addressing the question of why employers underpay their employees, from the perspective of employers themselves – a perspective largely missing from scholarly examination of wage law non‐compliance. We conducted a comprehensive search of the vast peer‐reviewed literature on the topic, identifying studies which collected and analyzed primary data from employers regarding why they breached wage laws. A review of these studies identified four broad types of explanation offered by employers relating to financial viability, perceived consequences of non‐compliance, ethical and normative rationalization, and the role of external actors. We propose a research agenda and theoretical framework based on the key empirical, methodological and theoretical gaps which remain in understanding why employers underpay their employees, and discuss how this agenda can inform policy interventions designed to ameliorate the problem.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 02-2012
Abstract: After years of steadily declining sales and profits, the global financial crisis sent the United States and Australian automotive manufacturing industries into crises of their own. Faced with dramatically reduced demand, the companies cut production and, consequently, their production workforces. Using qualitative data from case studies of the Ford Motor Company, the General Motors Company and their wholly owned Australian subsidiaries, Ford Australia and Holden, we can assess the extent to which these two multinational companies standardized their methods of adjusting labour levels and to what extent such responses were localized. In four manufacturing plants implementing similar cuts in production, responses were developed locally, shaped largely by local market, institutional and political forces.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-05-2022
Abstract: This article examines the benefits and costs of Australia's labour migration policies. While previous economics studies have demonstrated the efficiency‐related benefits of these policies, this article analyses the consequences for worker voice and equity, which employment relations scholars have identified as important labour market policy goals. We argue that the efficiency‐related benefits of labour migration policy reforms, particularly the expansion of temporary visa schemes, have been generated in part by barriers to temporary migrant workers' access to representation and social rights. This situation has contributed to an increase in the underpayment and mistreatment of temporary migrant workers by employers.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 29-01-2020
Abstract: This article presents an historical and comparative analysis of the bargaining power and agency conferred upon migrant workers in Australia under distinct policy regimes. Through an assessment of four criteria – residency status, mobility, skill thresholds and institutional protections – we find that migrant workers arriving in Australia in the period from 1973 to 1996 had high levels of bargaining power and agency. Since 1996, migrant workers’ power and agency has been incrementally curtailed, to the extent that Australia’s labour immigration policy resembles a guest-worker regime where migrants’ rights are restricted, their capacity to bargain for decent working conditions with their employers is truncated and their agency to pursue opportunities available to citizens and permanent residents is diminished. In contrast to recent assessments that Australia’s temporary visa system is working effectively, our analysis indicates that it is failing to protect temporary migrants at work. JEL Codes: J24, J61, J83
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-04-2020
Abstract: This article introduces the Journal of Industrial Relations’ Annual Review of Industrial Relations in 2019. It provides an overview of the six Annual Review articles, an international review and a practitioner review. Wage theft and other forms of employer non-compliance with minimum wage laws evolved into a major issue in 2019, with household brands bringing it to media prominence and state and Commonwealth governments exploring criminal sanctions for employers. For these reasons, this article focuses on wage theft and other employer non-compliance, interrogating in particular the Commonwealth government’s response.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 09-2015
Abstract: There exists a gap at the intersection of Australia’s immigration and employment laws that has serious implications for employees, employers and policy. Australia is host to a large and growing population of immigrants working without authorisation, described as the most significant problem facing Australian immigration authorities. These undocumented workers are often exploited by employers through wage theft, sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions. Yet, they are not entitled to protection under Australia’s employment laws. In addition to the implications for workers, there are broader policy concerns arising from the current system of regulation that effectively rewards employers who are equally in breach of immigration law. Left uncorrected, current regulation may in fact be encouraging a ‘race to the bottom’ for employment standards and increasing undocumented immigrant work. As well as highlighting the inadequacy of the existing regulatory framework, potential avenues for addressing this are explored.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-04-2018
Abstract: This article advances research on why international students, who comprise a growing segment of the workforce in many countries, are underpaid. By revisiting Piore’s dual frames of reference theory, the article builds an important knowledge base around migrant workers’ tolerance of low pay. The research uses mixed methods incorporating a survey of 1433 international students, and interviews with 40 of them. Drawing on segmented labour market theory and examining workers’ ‘multiple frames of reference’, the article seeks to explain migrant workers’, in this case international students’, tolerance of extensive and persistent underpayment. While migrants’ reference to lower pay in their home country has long been accepted as explanation for their acceptance of low pay, it is not found to be a significant factor. The new concept of ‘peer frame of reference’ is developed to explain their tolerance of underpayment.
Publisher: Inderscience Publishers
Date: 2011
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-2019
Abstract: This article introduces the Journal of Industrial Relations' Annual Review of Industrial Relations in 2018. Providing an overview of the other articles contained in the Annual Review issue, this article discusses industrial relations policy stagnation, and manoeuvring for change from both employer and employee representatives. With leadership uncertainty and change within the federal government, it has been a quiet year for industrial relations reform, although some key decisions from courts and tribunals are examined and some states’ return to private sector regulation noted. A number of questions are raised regarding potential for reform in 2019 and for how to conceptualise industrial relations change.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 23-03-2020
Abstract: This article exposes how disparity in the immigration rules of different visas combines with poor enforcement of labour standards to produce a segmented labour market in the Australian horticulture industry. We argue that the precarious work norms of the horticulture industry result in a ‘demand’ on the part of employers for harvest workers to perform precarious jobs. Such demand has been met by the workers supplied through different segments of temporary migrant labour who may be a particularly attractive form of precarious labour because of the conditionalities they experience as a result of their visa class. Our analysis demonstrates that not only do growers make preferences between local and temporary migrant workers, but they also make preferences between different types of temporary migrant workers. In identifying segmentation between temporary migrant workers on different visa categories, the article makes a significant contribution to the labour market segmentation literature, which hitherto has focused on segmentation between migrant workers and non-migrant workers.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-03-2019
Abstract: Much progress has been made recognising the importance of power and politics in organisational processes but legal regulatory institutional constraints on actors remain overemphasised in the extant literature. This article provides unique insight into organisational processes during the global economic crisis. The glare of crisis illuminates the negotiated nature of organisational processes and outcomes, demonstrating the range of options available to actors, both within and beyond apparent legal institutional limits. General Motors has received significant publicity for its near collapse, government bailout and restructure through bankruptcy proceedings. During the crisis the company made changes impacting its global workforce. This article tracks three key employment practices from development in the United States headquarters to implementation in the Australian subsidiary in the context of inconsistent local laws. Directives to cut pay for some employees, freeze pay for others and terminate the employment of a large number of workers were received and implemented in the subsidiary in varying and counterintuitive ways. Institutional consistency does not guarantee successful transfer, while even host country legal institutional inconsistency is no guarantee of failure.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 02-2019
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 04-2019
Abstract: The marginalisation of migrants at work, especially those in industries and occupations characterised by low wages and low-skilled jobs, is a critical issue for scholarship, policy and practice. While the bulk of migration-related research and theory comes from other disciplines, the insights of employment relations perspectives are particularly valuable in explaining why vulnerability to marginalisation and mistreatment is so persistent for these groups of migrants. We explore this issue by reviewing the reasons why migrant workers, especially newly arrived and temporary migrants, are more vulnerable than other groups of workers, examining worker-focused, employer-focused and state-focused scholarship on this issue. After providing an overview of the articles published in the Journal of Industrial Relations special issue on ‘Migration and Work’, which relate to the theme of the persistent relationship between migrant labour and low-quality work, this introductory article uses insights drawn from our review to propose an agenda for future research.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 06-2020
Abstract: This discussion paper by a group of scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations argues that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no return to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic’s disastrous worldwide health impacts have been exacerbated by, and have compounded, the unsustainability of economic globalisation based on the neoliberal dismantling of state capabilities in favour of markets. Flow-on economic impacts have simultaneously created major supply and demand disruptions, and highlighted the growing within-country inequalities and precarity generated by neoliberal regimes of labour market regulation. Taking an Australian and international perspective, we examine these economic and labour market impacts, paying particular attention to differential impacts on First Nations people, developing countries, women, immigrants and young people. Evaluating policy responses in a political climate of national and international leadership very different from those in which major twentieth century crises were addressed, we argue the need for a national and international conversation to develop a new pathway out of crisis.
Start Date: 2020
End Date: 07-2023
Amount: $341,590.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
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