The fundamental objective of the Government’s industrial relations policy is to encourage and assist Australian companies and their employees to adopt work and management practices that will strengthen their capacity to compete successfully both in domestic and international markets. To this end we support co-operative and equitable workplace bargaining, with wage increases being linked to the reform of work practices and attitudes. Our support for decentralised bargaining is aimed at improving productivity by fostering a new workplace culture of striving for continuous improvement. We emphatically reject the view that such an outcome will be achieved by wholesale deregulation and reliance on unfettered market forces. The Government is committed, for both equity and efficiency reasons, to maintaining the Accord approach to wages policy. We are also committed to an independent Australian Industrial Relations Commission playing the vital role of protecting lower paid employees through the safety net of minimum award wages and conditions.

Proponents of voluntary exchange in labour markets place great reliance on the contract of employment as an appropriate vehicle for the practical implementation of their exchange model. This paper argues a contrary view and suggests that the contract of employment may not be an appropriate vehicle for the voluntary exchange of labour.

Accelerating global economic change reflected in the high degree of capital mobility and integrated global markets has intensified investment competition between states. The union movement reacted through a commitment to strategic unionism and award restructuring. However, the impact of the latter has been limited by the occupationally divided structure of Australian unions. The paper analyses attempts to change this structure through union amalgamations and considers the impact inter-union power struggles, shaped by factional alignments, have had on the process. The paper assesses the organizational problems of conglomerate unionism and evaluates possible counters to likely tendencies.

Long term unemployment is now Australia’s most difficult and costly labour market problem. This paper argues the case for a different policy reorientation to what has been followed in the past. The first conclusion is that in the absence of a substantial reorientation of policy long term unemployment will remain very high, with the absolute number staying above the level inherited from the 1982/83 recession — which was until the current recession the highest in Australian history. Second, the equity and macroefficiency costs of not doing anything radically different are argued to be very high.

A final part of the analysis considers the fundamental challenge of the Job Compact policy suggestion made in the Government’s Green Paper on unemployment. However, the way in which the policy is to be instituted needs attention. It is likely that the use of the current JOBSTART wage subsidy scheme will not be enough to achieve the desired outcomes.

The need to improve workplace performance and productivity is a commonly expressed view. This paper reports on community perception of productivity. It suggests that workers’ negative perceptions regarding a distribution of the benefits of productivity may act as a barrier to productivity enhancement.

A number of important topics, themes and concepts frequently recur in studies of digital labour over the past decade, such as exploitation, precarity, unpaid labour, gig economy and platform labour. The first generation of the critique has drawn on a variety of Marxist, post-structuralist and Weberian sources to question prevailing neo-liberal and centrist models centred on values of efficiency and the supposed empowerment of workers and users. While these topics, themes and concepts have been beneficial in establishing a basis for critique, there is a danger that they may become rather familiar and potentially even a little stale. Therefore, this article suggests a need to renew the critique of digital labour, as the digital realm stabilises around a set of key global players and platforms and as labour activists continue to face serious obstacles to success in an era of authoritarian populism. Here, I concentrate on introducing our themed collection surrounding a renewed critique moving beyond a dichotomy of exploitation and labour agency. I also encourage different disciplines to enrich and renew studies of digital labour.

This article argues the case for changes to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as a key part of fundamental tax reform in Australia. A more comprehensive base would bring gains in efficiency and simplicity, with equity goals better met by the income transfer system. Revenue gains of a broader GST base and/or a higher rate could fund tax mix change packages to replace more distorting state stamp duties and fund lower income tax rates. The tax mix change packages would improve efficiency and simplicity, with no substantial changes to aggregate revenue or to equity.

It is argued that New Zealand’s privatisation programme is unlikely to meet its main overt objective of easing fiscal problems. In the case of sales of major public utilities, neither allocative, internal nor social efficiency are likely to be enhanced either. A brief history, and calendar, of the asset sales programme is provided.

Industrial Relations returned to the forefront of the Australian public debate in 1998 with the dispute between the Federal Government and Patrick Stevedores on the one hand and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) on the other. This article, which was written in April 1998 at the height of the dispute, concentrates on the economic issues involved and the facts about ‘waterfront reform’. The article analyses the economic aspects of the dispute in terms of employment issues, productivity issues, industrial relations and the relationship between waterfront reform and Australia’s international trade. It concludes that economic issues must be understood carefully in order to distinguish between genuine practical concerns about waterfront efficiency and purely political points made by those who oppose the MUA and trade unionism in general.

The question of how often to log is examined applying two different methods – one optimizes over time the value of its timber harvested and the other considers the forest as a multi-use resource. The former, applied to data for the Eden area given an optimal rotation period of 25 years, the latter suggests that it is optimal never to harvest pristine native old growth forests.

The purpose of this article is to assess the relationship between trade liberalisation in Tunisia and the employment intensity of sectoral output growth, in order to examine the claim that free trade creates jobs by stimulating growth. Using panel data for 15 Tunisian sectors over the period 1983–2010, we compare estimated sectoral output–employment elasticities prior to and following the Free Trade Agreement process with the European Union. The results provide evidence that trade liberalisation in Tunisia has led to an increase in the intensity of employment in exporting manufacturing sectors like textiles, clothing and leather industries, and mechanical and electrical industries. However, their ability to generate jobs in response to value-added growth remains weak. Conversely, since the Free Trade Agreement process, the most labour-intensive service sectors, notably tourism and miscellaneous services, have shown a significant decrease in the employment intensity of their output growth. Our findings suggest that the Free Trade Agreement with the European Union has not really fostered the shift of the Tunisian Economy towards a more inclusive model and support the argument for a reorientation of investment policy in favour of sectors generating more job opportunities.

Financial literacy is a dangerous illusion. The article builds on existing critiques, notably the work of Lauren Willis, to show that the discourse of financial literacy education raises fundamental epistemological issues about the nature of financial markets and financial behaviour. The difficulties of achieving financial literacy are ill conceived simply as the outcomes of market imperfections. Instead, structural inequalities, financial reform, and the nature of financial assets preclude consumers from achieving adequate levels of financial competence and the claim that they can do so diverts attention from the causes of unequal economic outcomes.

Direct participation in Denmark has been facilitated by agreements between employers and unions as well as a prevailing consensus about the value of cooperative arrangements. A revised Cooperation Agreement was achieved between the central union and employer organisations in 1986. It seeks to improve efficiency as well as enhancing employees’ welfare and security. This agreement has had a positive influence on the spread of participation in Danish industry. The paper examines, in greater detail, the experience of the banking and metal industries. Although Danish employers have generally advocated greater decentralisation, the Danish industrial relations system has retained a centralised framework within which direct participation has occurred.

The euro project is now at the threshold of disintegration as the fault-lines between the core/surplus countries and the peripheral/deficit countries experience a profound rupture. In the absence of political union or fiscal federalism, these centrifugal forces appear to be irreversible. It is difficult to envisage the current system, with its internal contradictions, surviving the crisis that now engulfs the entire eurozone. The present crisis is to a large extent the continuation of the longstanding neoliberal policies favoured by Germany, which have informed the creation of the euro. This article examines the historical context of the debt crisis and the institutional design of this flawed monetary edifice.

This paper contains a survey of recent empirical research on the relationship between public capital and private sector production. The implications of these empirical studies for policy debates over the appropriate level of public capital are also examined.

Over the past 100 years, retirement income provision in Australia has evolved into a multi-pillar arrangement comprising the Age Pension, the Superannuation Guarantee and voluntary retirement saving. With fully funded superannuation and a public pension that is both less generous than many other countries and means tested, Australia's retirement income arrangements are well placed to cope with population ageing. However concerns remain in relation to adequacy, efficiency and the vulnerability of private provision to trends in labour, economic and financial markets.