Just over 20 years ago, Fred Gruen (1982) reviewed debates about the level of welfare expenditure in Australia, noting them as being motivated on the one hand by the view that ‘more is better’, and on the other hand by the view that ‘too much’ is dangerous. Despite Gruen's debunking of many assertions about the Australian welfare state, the debate continues, with arguments on the one hand, that Australian welfare state spending is ‘mean’ compared to other countries, and on the other hand, that Australia has a significant problem of welfare dependency and increasing welfare spending. This paper presents the results of recent OECD studies that provide the most-up-to-date comparative information on the relative performance of Australian welfare arrangements. The paper looks at: (i) the trends in the level of social expenditure in Australia compared to other OECD countries, and explanations for differences across countries; (ii) the level of benefit receipt among people of working age; (iii) the impact of social expenditure on income distribution; and (iv) the relative generosity of benefits and implications for incentives. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy conclusions that might be drawn from these comparisons.

This introduction overviews four approaches to theoretical and empirical research on the ‘gig’ economy, framing them within the concept of the ‘fissuring of the workplace’. It outlines arguments that ‘gig’ or digital work is not a new phenomenon but a resurgence of older, unregulated labour extraction methods and outlines the need for a more nuanced way of measuring the dimensions of job insecurity and their corrosive effects. In foreshadowing potential policy approaches to addressing the regulatory deficit surrounding gig economy work, it argues for an eclectic approach to using and strengthening legislation designed to safeguard the rights of consumers and providers of services, including contractors, and regardless of employment status. Finally, it foreshadows a study of how a successful union movement respond to the gig economy – negotiation with a digital platform to bring advertised hourly pay rates into line with the minima set within the industrial relations system for employment in the relevant industries.

This article explores the relationship between precarious employment and seafarers’ control over the scheduling and location of their work, and considers the implications of this relationship for their occupational health and safety. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 permanently and 17 precariously employed seafarers. In contrast with those on permanent contracts, seafarers employed by crewing agencies on temporary contracts were deployed at short notice and commenced work on vessels irrespective of whether they had experienced an adequate rest period at home. Such precariously employed seafarers were also deployed across the various sectors of the industry on unfamiliar vessels. Seafarers felt strongly that scheduling and location uncertainties were closely linked with increased risks to their safety and well-being, and it was clear that these areas of uncertainty were frequently experienced in combination, in particular, by those with precarious employment arrangements. The article, therefore, suggests that the widespread disorganisation of the employment relationship increases the occupational health and safety risks faced by those working in an already dangerous industry. It concludes that this lack of commitment by shipping companies to their workforce means that, for many seafarers, protection against these additional risks is effectively at the discretion of the captain on board.

While traditional labour market estimates indicate that there has been little change in the proportion of workers holding multiple jobs in North America, survey instrument deficiencies may be hiding more substantial growth driven by the gig economy. To address this possibility, I test a broader measure of multiple jobholding to examine its prevalence in the Canadian workforce based on two national studies of workers (2011 Canadian Work Stress and Health Study and 2019 Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study). Almost 20% of workers in 2019 reported multiple jobholding – a rate that is three times higher than Statistics Canada estimates. While multivariate analyses reveal that the multiple jobholding rate in 2019 was 30% higher than in the 2011 Canadian Work Stress and Health Study, multiple jobholders in 2019 were less likely to report longer work hours in secondary employment. Analyses also revealed that having financial difficulties is consistently associated with multiple jobholding in 2011 and 2019. Collectively, these findings suggest that while the spread of short-term work arrangements has facilitated Canadians’ secondary employment decisions, for many workers these decisions may reflect underlying problems in the quality of primary employment in Canada, rather than labour market opportunity. I discuss the potential links between multiple jobholding, the gig economy and employment precariousness.

A growing trend in work organisation in Australia is for firms to outsource many activities that had been previously performed in-house. Outsourcing these activities, it is argued, will free up human and capital resources as well as allow for increased flexibility in the way labour is employed. Although the extent of outsourcing and other approaches to flexibility have been well documented in Australia, little attempt has been made to evaluate such practices. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing research and to evaluate the effect of outsourcing on firm performance and employee commitment. The research findings, which are based on four manufacturing companies, shows that employee commitment among contractor employees is generally high, although the economic benefits to the firm may take several years to realise.

This article analyses the 2008 economic crisis and its outcomes for the Baltic states. It then gives a genealogy of European economic policy responses to the crisis, tracing them from the emerging ‘freshwater’ school of economics (e.g. University of Chicago) that arose in opposition to Keynesian theory. The more immediate cause of the 2008 crisis, long in the making, was its reliance on private debt to sustain economic demand in light of profit-enhancing wage suppression. Following the 2008 financial shock, European Union policymakers crafted policy that placed the burden of adjustment on labour. A programme of austerity was chosen in much of the European Union, at odds with the post-war European ‘social model’. This represented a retreat from the notion of a European project that encouraged liberalisation of economic policy but at the same time could be harmonised with a social dimension to create a distinctive ‘Social Europe’. Nowhere was this austerity more vigorously applied than in the Baltic states. Its effects are examined here, along with lessons to be derived from that experience.

Supply chain security presents numerous challenges to governments interested in defending against terrorist threats. While most approaches stress technological solutions, scholars and policy-makers tend to overlook economics, labour market issues, and industrial relations. Applying agency theory from behavioural economics, this article analyses threats to the US supply chain and opportunities for efficient solutions. Using data from a sophisticated web-based survey of owner-operator cost-of-operations, it shows that drayage drivers are among the lowest paid truck drivers and workers in the US. We provide evidence that low pay is associated with both safety and security risk. Low-wage labour and subcontracting present challenges to US and foreign supply-chain security because the market attracts workers who have few other employment options. In this environment, principals and agents currently make inefficient and inequitable contracts because markets do not reflect the complete costs associated with low-probability/high-impact events like cargo theft and transport security.

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.

Contracting out publicly funded vocational education and training (VET) in Australia to private providers has been accompanied by persistent concern at decline in the quality of training. Using transaction cost economics, this outcome is ascribed to the characteristics of publicly funded VET as a commodity and the conditions under which it is privately produced and consumed. The article concludes that, in general, publicly funded VET does not meet the minimum conditions for efficient contracting out. The economic and social consequences of inadequate quality VET provision are potentially severe.

Most studies of the role of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) have argued that the peak-council has traditionally had little if any authority over its affiliates. This paper contends that this situation changed during the 1980s and that the ACTU achieved a significant degree of internal union authority. Examples of such authority are documented and the combination of external factors, such as the political and economic environment, and internal factors, such as leadership and reduced factionalism, that contributed to this growth of authority are analysed.

Non-standard patterns of paid work are increasing in Australia, and young people are among the most affected. To investigate the impact of non-standard work schedules on young people’s relationships, this article draws on data from 50 interviews conducted in 2008 and 4 surveys conducted between 2007 and 2012 with 636 young people (aged 18–24 years), all participating in the Life Patterns Project longitudinal study of youth in Australia. Over the 6 years, a majority of participants were engaged in non-standard work, working weekends, evenings or public holidays. A significant minority also faced weekly variability in their work schedules. The interview data suggest that these patterns of employment can be considered unsocial, making it more difficult to find regular periods of time together with a group of friends. Interview discussion also suggests that as a substitute for a greater quantity of shared time, some young people seek out shared experiences felt to be intense or out of the ordinary, such as that facilitated by alcohol consumption, to make the most of limited opportunities to bond with a group of close friends.

Individual managers may make judgements and decisions which reflect social expectations rather than organisational policy. Society generally requires that individuals with an illness take leave from their work, seek medical assistance and return when they are well. This is not possible for individuals with chronic illness. By its nature, chronic illness has no cure. Individuals who are diagnosed with diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes or inflammatory bowel disease and who also undertake paid employment may need to disclose their illness and seek some form of accommodation in their workplace. Understanding attitudes of managers plays a significant role in the success of managing work and chronic illness. This article examines the working experiences of women with chronic illness where the attitudes of managers were less understanding.

Many governments across the world provide extensive funding to national sports teams and individual athletes in pursuit of success at international competitions such as the Olympic Games. One factor that motivates governments to fund national sports teams is the potential to exploit the elevation in nationalistic pride that attends international sporting success. Drawing on research in the psychology of sport, this article contends that politicians can access the ‘reflective glow’ of successful athletes for their political benefit. The statistical correlation between government funding and Olympic success is explored using the basic prisoners’ dilemma to represent the decisions of two governments competing for sports success. While the analysis is simple, we argue that it sheds some light on recent examples and represents a first step in understanding this complex issue.

Globally, fisheries and forestry have been characterised by substantial ecological and economic problems. Both sectors have become notorious for depleting the stocks on which they depend, eroding the value of harvested natural resources over time and having significant negative ‘by-catch’ impacts on non-target natural resources. Problems of resource overuse and potential ecosystem collapse inherently derive from poor decisions influenced by those with undue or excessive economic, political and labour market power. Solutions to problems of unsustainability of resource management will need to engage with these economic drivers and beneficiaries, and require strategies including better and more independent assessments of the status and condition of resources. Deep-seated problems caused by resource over-commitment need more robust approaches to resource assessment that (1) better account for uncertainty (including uncertainty resulting from stock losses due to disturbance), (2) avoid ratchet effects and (3) provide appropriate ecological parameters for resource harvest. The United Nations framework for environmental and economic accounting methods can help assess the economic and other contributions of different resource-based industries and inform decisions about trade-offs between competing interests. Finally, there is value in examining successful and unsuccessful industry restructuring, in which decisions to transition away from demonstrably unsustainable resource industries have been made.

Traditionally, older people have been the key targets of Australia’s targeted welfare state. Flat rate pensions and widespread home ownership have ensured relative equality in older life. However, in response to perceived fiscal pressures generated by population ageing, Australia has increasingly shifted its policy settings, encouraging private savings over public risk pooling. Private savings are increasingly supported by public subsidy through tax policy. This has led to overlapping policy priorities, as public subsidies are used both as incentives to promote savings and as social policy instruments to promote adequate living standards in retirement. This conflict is evident in recent policy reviews of taxation, public spending and pension policy. This article explores the development of this conflict and how it manifests in proposals for reform. We argue that the conflation of welfare and taxation goals increasingly creates a dual welfare state that promotes private provision at the expense of both equity and efficiency. We suggest that more explicit identification of the roles of tax policy, and the welfare implications of tax changes, would help to improve policy design.

A number of recent inquiries into Australia’s national training system have found it to be on the sick side. This article seeks the causes of this in the recent evolution of training policy, which commenced in the late 1980s. The article traces the demise of the first moderately interventionist National Training Reform Agenda, which union reformers played a role in shaping, through the increasing marketisation of training policy. Under the Liberal National Coalition, budget constraints and the short term interests of employers have increasingly driven training policy. The drift of policy is against the grain of prescriptions drawn from the international literature, which shows the need for interventionist measures to correct ‘market failure’, and to ensure adequate expenditure and the integrity of qualifications.

Human civilisation faces a series of existential threats from the combination of five global and human-engineered challenges, namely climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation and rising social inequality. These challenges are arguably being manifested in both an increased likelihood and magnified impact of catastrophes like forest fires, prolonged droughts, pandemics and social dislocation/upheaval. This article argues that in understanding and addressing these challenges, important lessons can be drawn from what has repeatedly caused organisational failures. It applies the ‘Ten Pathways to Disaster’ model to a series of disasters/catastrophic events and then argues this model is salient to understanding inadequate responses to the five threats to civilisation. The article argues that because these challenges interact in mutually reinforcing ways, it is critical to address them simultaneously not in isolation.

This study examines the causal relationship between education and the use of digital collaborative platforms as a first step in exploring the potential impact of the new digital labour markets on inequality. From the viewpoint of transaction costs theory, the less educated could benefit significantly from the digital collaborative economy due to the reduction in information costs made possible by this new form of exchange. Conversely, a positive relationship between educational level and platform use may be expected following neoclassical and institutionalist economic theories. Using microdata from the 2016 Eurobarometer survey, together with an instrumental variables strategy and conventional ordinary least squares models, hypothesis testing reveals that education has a clear positive effect on digital collaborative platform use. As a result, the less educated are less likely to access the job opportunities offered by digital labour markets. Understanding the relationship between education and access to digital collaborative platforms and impacts on socio-economic inequality is crucial for designing future public policies that promote social justice and well-being in a disrupted landscape.

As in many other countries, the eighties have seen the re-emergence of poverty as a political issue in Australia. Rising unemployment and the increased incidence of sole parenthood have put more children at risk of poverty, a development which has prompted increased policy concern. This paper presents estimates of the incidence and structure of poverty in Australia in 1981–82, 1985–86 and 1989–90, using the poverty standard developed by the Poverty Commission in the seventies. The estimates for 1989–90 are based on data generated from the 1986 Income Distribution Survey by a microsimulation model that allows for trends in demographic change, labour market participation and income during the second half of the eighties. The results indicate that the overall poverty rate has increased from 9.2 per cent in 1981–82 to 12.8 per cent in 1989–90. This is despite the fact that the incomes of many low income groups have increased in real terms, in many cases substantially. The reason for this apparent paradox is that the poverty standard is a relative one, and has thus itself been increased in line with average community incomes. One of the conclusions of the paper is that it may be necessary to reconsider the use of a relative poverty standard when assessing short-run trends in the extent of poverty.

Financialisation and financial risk have become current buzzwords, but the connections between finance and labour are not well developed. Often labour is cast simply as the distributional victim of developments like shareholder value, the privatisation of public infrastructure and labour market reform. This article engages developments in the construction industry and locates a growing financial logic inside ‘production’ and work in that sector. Through the concepts of liquidity and risk, we identify causal connections, not just parallels, between financial innovation and the reorganisation of the logic and structure of work in the Australian construction and property services industry.