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Union responses to regulatory change: Strategies of protective layering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Sarah Kaine  and
Cathy Brigden
Sarah Kaine*
Affiliation:
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Cathy Brigden
Affiliation:
RMIT University, Australia
*
Sarah Kaine, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia. Email: sarah.kaine@uts.edu.au
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Abstract

Changes to the Australian regulatory landscape over the past three decades of global liberalisation created regulatory uncertainty for unions. Coupled with membership decline and internal restructuring through union amalgamations, they prompted an important reorientation by unions (back) to the workplace, and precipitated different strategic decisions and organising challenges. However, the proliferation of fragmented employment relationships rendered workplace-centred organising an insufficient response. As a result, some unions experimented with ways of supplementing existing legal frameworks by other regulatory initiatives, through campaigns that resulted in the layering of regulation. In this article, we examine attempts by three unions – covering garment workers, road transport workers and aged care workers – to address the needs of members in garment homeworking, road transport and aged care in a contested regulatory environment.

Keywords

J51J53K31L50Employment regulationinformal regulationinstitutional layeringlabour lawregulatory layeringregulatory pluralismreinforcing labour regulationsupply chain labour standardstrade union strategyunion campaigning
Type
Articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 26 , Issue 4: Special Collection: Union Organising and Revitalisation , December 2015 , pp. 614 - 630
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015

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