Editorial

We are extremely pleased to provide readers with an update on our efforts to facilitate First Nations research and researchers in the field of industrial relations, extend knowledge of the journal and breadth of coverage through broader geographical representation on our Editorial Board and through our social media strategy and further engagement with industrial relations practitioners. We also provide a brief overview of the recent successful and well-attended ALERA National conference for industrial relations professionals in Australia held in Hobart on 27–28 October, which featured key players in the field.

Previously we reported on (i) the launch of the Early Career Researcher (ECR) Editorial Traineeships and the appointment of 4 Trainees in 2022 from Australia, Canada and Italy for 2-year terms; and (ii) the launch of the JIR Indigenous Early Career Researcher Editorial Traineeship scheme in 2023 (https://journals-sagepub-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/pb-assets/cmscontent/JIR/-1681341722.pdf). We are now delighted to announce, following receipt and review of an EOI from an Indigenous ECR in October 2023, the Editors have appointed recently graduated Dr Samantha Cooms as the inaugural Indigenous Trainee. Dr Cooms received her PhD (Central Queensland University) and a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Research and Leadership (Melbourne University) in 2022. She is a Noonuccal woman with a Bachelor of Psychology with honours majoring in Indigenous studies who has previously published in the Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues and Disability and Society. She will commence in 2024.

Our efforts to expand the JIR's Editorial Board have succeeded in increasing the number of leading employment and industrial relations scholars in Australia and around the world to 60, including from previously unrepresented countries. Our editorial team is also committed to engagement with practitioners to ensure exchange between ‘town and gown.’ All Australian-based Editorial Team members have become members of ALERA's constituent Industrial Relations Societies in their primary state of residence. In addition, we have sought to give attention to the interests and concerns of ALERA member practitioners in the industrial relations field and issues of interest to peak bodies, employers, employees, and not-for-profit organisations providing employment support for vulnerable workers, the professions, and representatives of professional associations. We are now extending our engagement efforts by forming a JIR Practitioner Advisory Committee and we are pleased to announce the founding members who have accepted our invitation to be part of this committee as follows: Nate Burke, Assistant Director, Bargaining and Industry Policy Branch, Safety and Industry Policy Division, Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (IRS Queensland), Linda Colley (Queensland Government Special Commissioner Equity and Diversity, Public Service Commission, Queensland); Julie Gordon (Legal Officer Australian Manufacturing Workers Union [AMWU] and IRS NSW Committee Member); Darcy Gunning (Campaigns Organiser, AMWU Western Australia); Brenton Higgins (Lead Organiser, Community and Public Sector Union [CPSU] for Australian Capital Territory [ACT] Government); Chris Meallin, Senior HR & Workplace Relations Specialist (IRS Victoria Committee); and Vicki Telfer (Northern Territory [NT] Commissioner for Public Employment, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia -Sep 2019-August 2023, President NT IPAA (Institute of Public Administration Australia).

Together with Associate Editor Dr Sharlene Leroy-Dyer and JIR ECR Trainee, Dr Karen Douglas, the Editors-in-Chief recently attended the extremely successful conference organised by the JIR's owner, ALERA – ‘Australian Industrial Relations – What's Next?’ The Journal's Annual Report was presented to the ALERA Executive meeting and accepted unanimously.

The conference featured a distinguished line up of speakers and opportunities for discussion and debate on topical issues affecting IR professionals. The conference began with a Welcome to Country from Uncle Rodney Dillan, which featured a smoking ceremony, followed by a welcome to Tasmania from the Governor, the Honourable Barbara Baker AC. Speakers from the political realm included Tony Burke, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for the Arts and Leader of the House in the 47^th Australian Parliament; Michaelia Cash, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Senate; and Barbara Pocock, South Australian Senator for the Greens and their spokesperson for Finance, Employment and Public Sector portfolios.

Notable speakers from the field of industrial relations practice included Adam Hatcher, President of the Fair Work Commission (FWC); Liam O’Brian, Assistant Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU); Jessica Tinsley, General Counsel and Director Workplace Relations at the Australian Chamber of Commerce; Anna Booth, Fair Work Ombudsman; Josh Bornstein, National Practice Leader of Maurice Blackburn's Employment and Industrial Relations Group who gave a presentation that reviewed Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Case Law; Rodney Croome, AM spoke on LGBTIQA+ issues, Mary Mallett, CEO of Disability Advocacy Network Australia (Canberra) spoke on issues relating to disability and work; Nareen Young, from UTS Business School who spoke about Indigenous Peoples, work and human rights; Maree Norton (Tasmanian & Victorian Bars), John Rule (Maurice Blackburn), Emily Shepherd (Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Tasmania), and Will Gordon (Registered Nurse & ANMF Workplace Delegate Tasmania) who spoke on Child Sex Offender Working on the Children's Ward and the Breakdown of Workplace Systems. The second day of the conference featured a panel with the ALERA Executive followed by a session on multi-employer bargaining and a final session on The Rise of Red Unions. In the interim, Thomas Mayo from the Maritime Union of Australia spoke about First Nations Voice and Workplace Issues. We envisage building on this knowledge exchange with practitioners through future roundtables and webinars that are targeted toward the latest developments in the field and through our social media strategy.

Academic journals have increasingly come to use social media to spread news of latest articles and thereby increase the journal's profile and reputation not only among scholars but also among other stakeholders. The JIR's social media strategy and activities (including promotion of articles and special issues) also aim to increase readership and submissions. Our activities have been enhanced by the appointment of Dr Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez as Social Media Editor for the journal, based on her experience in fulfilling this role with other high-quality journals overseas. With assistance from Dr de la Cruz-Fernandez, and her work posting news of articles, special issues, and author videos, the JIR LinkedIn Group has grown to 240 members, while the JIR LinkedIn Corporate page now has 434 followers, from all continents. Two recently recorded videos with authors have been uploaded on our new YouTube channel. This is a significant milestone for the journal. Moving forward, our goal is to create podcasts for all the articles in each issue, as we believe that video abstracts are an incredibly important format for showcasing research. By expanding our content offerings to include podcasts, we can reach a wider audience and provide an engaging and accessible way for people to explore the latest research in our field. Promotion of articles via Twitter (X) has also had an impact. From October 2022, there was a noticeable uptick in tweets, with the highest peak observed in August 2023 at 7248 impressions. Such activity has boosted interest from scholars internationally and helped to promote our Special Issues, while also increasing proposal submissions for Special Issues. Two have been scheduled for 2024 and one for 2025. Subjects include (i) Workplace Psychosocial Hazards: Employment Relations Frameworks and Implications for Workers’ Health and Safety; (ii) Authoritarian Innovations in Labour Governance; and (iii) The Potential and Challenges in supporting Decent Work in Sub-Saharan Africa. Further details can be found on the JIR's LinkedIn pages.

The range of authors and research methods contained in the current issue demonstrates interest in publishing in the journal by a wide range of scholars in Australia and various parts of the world. Our Australian authors come from Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong Universities in New South Wales, Queensland University of Technology, and the University of Western Australia. Others are from universities in Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Ireland, and Spain. We are particularly pleased that several of the papers compare IR developments in a number of countries. We are also extremely pleased that one of these addresses labour market outcomes of Indigenous peoples, specifically for factors associated with the Greenlandic Inuit population's employment outcomes. This article, ‘Employment in a post-colonial society – The case of Greenland’ by Rasmus Lind Ravn and Laust Høgedahl used a survey to examine individual-level factors that promote or inhibit labour market participation and employment in Greenland comparing respondents who were born in Greenland and answered the survey in Greenlandic and those born in Denmark who answered it in Danish. Findings regarding the likelihood of being employed point to a disparity the authors argue provides evidence of an ethnically segregated labour market with indications of discrimination.

Diversity related issues are also the focus of two additional papers. Eliroma Gardiner and Jonas Debrulle compare Australian and UK age discrimination and dismissal cases to consider whether employer-dismissed older workers are adequately compensated. Their analysis of successful Australian and a selection of successful UK age discrimination and dismissal cases from 2017 to 2020 suggests UK cases can inform and strengthen the development of Australian age discrimination law. Alison Preston's examination of ‘Changing Gender Role Attitudes and the Changing Gender Gap in Labour Force Participation’ uses the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to examine the relationship between gender role attitudes and the labour supply of men and women.

Wei Huang, et. al., adopt a mutual gains perspective to investigate how a collaborative industrial relations (IR) climate impacts organisational occupational and health safety (OHS) psychological safety and ultimately organisational OHS performance in China. Michele Ford and Soksamphoas Im examine the experiences of unionised and non-unionised hotel workers in Siem Reap, Cambodia before and during the pandemic, finding that unionised hotel workers were better supported by their employers and the government than non-unionised hotel workers, and that their unions played an important role in securing these benefits.

Alejandro Godino, Oscar Molina, and Joel Martí consider the co-existence and complementarity of formal and informal mechanisms in the achievement of collective agreements and conflict resolution by applying a relational approach and social network analysis to the study of the retail sector in Italy, Netherlands, and Spain. Vincent Pasquier, Christian Lévesque, and Marc-Antonin Hennebert examine how eight Quebecois trade unions present themselves online thereby adding to the literature on unions’ use of social media and identifying how communicational spaces help to shape them.

We are also extremely pleased to include a new Controversy sparked by a response to an article published in JIR (65:2) in 2023 by Caroline Murphy and Thomas Turner entitled ‘Employment stability and decent work: Trends, characteristics and determinants in a liberal market economy’. Using Labour Force Survey data, the paper suggested reasons for the persistence of a stable employment regime in the Irish private sector over more than 20 years. Having read the article, Xavier St-Denis, PhD, Assistant Professor (Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) and Centre Urbanisation Culture Société wrote to us to inquire whether JIR accepts respectful and constructive responses to articles published in the journal. As we are committed to advancing scholarly debate in the Journal in order to advance scholarship and enable more nuanced engagement with contemporary world developments, and to ensure fairness to the original authors, we asked Caroline Murphy and Thomas Turner whether they would agree to participating in a controversy section by providing a response. We welcome the paper from St-Denis and the gracious and fulsome response to it by Murphy and Turner. All three papers raise some important and nuanced issues relating to the impact of neoliberalism.

Finally, we thank John Buchanan and Russell Lansbury for providing the journal with an outstanding obituary for Ron Callus whose untimely passing was a shock to the Australian industrial relations community.