Journal of Industrial Relations

Since the 1960s, British trade unions have developed a policy for representing the interests of part-time workers, a significant process of frame extension within a mature social movement. This article seeks to account for this change. It concludes that change was a product of the growth of feminist activism within unions, the deployment of instrumental and solidarity frames and a response to political opportunities provided by both the British state and European Union.

In police services, both in Australia and internationally, attention has been focused on increasing the representation of women. The availability of part-time work has been identified as a key mechanism to retain women who have been recruited. To date, however, the take-up of part-time work remains low. It is also concentrated in administrative work and non-operational policing work. In this article, we draw on research in Victoria Police around the experiences of, and attitudes towards, part-time work. The research suggests that there are a number of policy constraints to the take up of part-time work, particularly by police officers. There are also significant cultural barriers to both increasing and integrating part-time work, which influence attitudes to part-time work at all levels of the organization. However, these barriers are intertwined with and reinforced by institutional structures and processes that position part-time work as ‘other’ and a gendered understanding of police work. In increasing access to part-time work, the challenge for police services is to address both institutional and cultural barriers to the integration of part-time and full-time work.

This article provides a comparative glimpse of work/family issues in Australia and the USA. It begins with a summary of an emerging vision of ideal policies and practices for work and family. The article then provides historical background for the recent emergence of a ‘care gap’ in both countries, focusing on key commonalities and differences. The current status of the gap and the related ‘default solution’ to the gap are then outlined. Key commonalities here include an increasing diversity of family forms, a rise in delayed and denied childbearing, and substantial gender inequality. Significant current divergence across the societies includes relatively more family-responsive governmental policies in Australia, more attractive part-time opportunities for mothers in Australia, a relatively more equal division of labor in the home in the USA, a greater prevalence of corporate-sponsored work/family policies in the USA, and greater coverage of Australian employees by work/family policies negotiated through enterprise agreements. A tentative research agenda is provided in conclusion, focusing on part-time employment options, work incentives and childcare for single parents, the causes of delayed and denied childbearing, and enterprise bargaining and corporate policies.

By applying the strategies of international anti-sweatshop campaigns to the Australian context, recent regulations governing home-based clothing production hold retailers responsible for policing the wages and employment conditions of clothing outworkers who manufacture clothing on their behalf. This article argues that the new approach oversimplifies the regulatory challenge by assuming (1) that Australian clothing production is organized in a hierarchical ‘buyer-led’ linear structure in which core retail firms have the capacity to control their suppliers’ behaviour; (2) that firms act as unitary moral agents; and, (3) that interventions imported from other times and places are applicable to the contemporary Australian context. After considering some alternative regulatory approaches, the article concludes that the new regulatory strategy effectively privatizes responsibility for labour market conditions - a development that cries out for further debate.

This article considers the issues that arise when a worker becomes incapacitated for work and the contract of employment is put in peril by reason of long-term absence from work. The doctrine of frustration of the contract of employment and its contemporary application is the starting point for discussion. Most typically in the employment context this arises as a consequence of the death or serious injury of the worker. In examining the interaction of these concepts the article examines the contemporary application of the case of Finch v Sayers ([1976] 2 NSWLR 540), which has been influential in the interpretation of the application of the doctrine of frustration of contract in employment matters. In the final section the decision in Finch v Sayers is reconsidered having regard to contemporary influences and changes in labour market regulation. At the time of writing the Workplace Relations Amendment (WorkChoices) Act 2005 (Cth) had only recently been enacted. An additional brief comment on some possible implications for frustration of contract of employment concludes the article.

Information on the uptake of parental leave policies and the work experiences of parents prior to and following the birth of a child is extremely limited in Australia. In this research note we outline the development of, and some initial findings from, a survey designed to fill this statistical gap. We discuss methodological issues associated with collecting this type of data and present preliminary snapshots of the use of maternity and paternity leave in Australia in 2005. Our goal is to identify pathways beyond the statistical gap, both in the sense of providing basic statistics that are currently ‘missing’ and in extending the range and quality of information available on parental leave in Australia.

This article explores the role of industrial ‘tripartitism’ as a feature of industrial relations in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from a survey of the property management industry they conducted, the authors show how diversity in the forms of hiring practices and heterogeneity in the composition of the workforce contribute to an impasse in which an industrial tripartite council is bogged down despite its stated mission. The controversies arise from the issue of the long work hours of the security guards, leading to wide public concern and the subsequent proposed change from the industry norm of the two-shift day to a three-shift day for the workers. The case study also attests to the difficulties in setting up industry-wide work standards due to intra-sectoral diversities, and in particular, the dual labour market conditions and the multi-tiered principal-agent relationship arising from outsourcing arrangement.