Concentrated corporate power and failures to manage the distribution of risk mean that workers bear the heaviest burden in globalised apparel supply chains. Law and associated normative frameworks seek to strengthen collective worker voice and other worker rights to tip the scales of unequal bargaining power to benefit the workers. However, some of the traditional tools of labour law such as unionising and collective bargaining have weakened over the years and exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a conceptual framework based on regulatory theory, feminist insights, and semi-autonomous social fields, this article examines the law-practice gap for regulating just wages within the apparel supply chain, responses, and how workers fight wage theft and carve out pathways to demand just wage standards. Drawing from the case of Sri Lanka, the article discusses how alternative forms of worker voice seek to fill in the implementation gaps. The findings of this study demonstrate worker initiatives to shape the regulation of just wages and how networked labour activism, especially by women workers, prompts to re-imagine structures of actor accountability on wage rights.

For migrant workers who do not have access to other means of income, the platform economy offers a viable yet exploitative alternative to the conventional labour market. Migrant workers are used as a source of cheap labour by platforms – and yet, they are not disempowered. They are at the heart of a growing platform worker movement. Across different international contexts, migrants have played a key role in leading strikes and other forms of collective action. This article traces the struggles of migrant platform workers in Berlin and London to explore how working conditions, work experiences, and strategies for collective action are shaped at the intersection of multiple precarities along lines of employment and migration status. Combining data collected through research by the Fairwork project with participant observation and ethnography, the article argues that migrant workers are more than an exploitable resource: they are harbingers of change.

In recent migration research temporality has become a prominent figure. Focussing on temporality allows to shed light on some aspects of labour mobility that enlighten our understanding of work-related conflicts. Especially with view to labour market inclusion, migrants often experience the (assumed) temporal limitation and unpredictability of migration projects, work and residence permits, as well as employment relationships. Correspondingly, labour policies, sector-specific company structures and management techniques also have a temporal dimension (time limits, seasonality, outsourcing schemes), which have effects on conflicts in and around work. Furthermore, one has to situate labour and labour migration within its context of social reproduction in order to better understand, how paid wage labour is embedded in social activities and networks such as households, families and communities, and shaped by the social, developmental and migratory policies that condition workers’ labour market inclusion. This conceptual paper argues that for migrants in particular, the (assumed) temporal limitation and unpredictability of migration projects, work/residence permits, and employment relationships is of great importance when it comes to analysing conflict-ridden negotiations over labour relations and working conditions.

This paper presents the results of research, which highlights the situation during the pandemic in sectors characterised by low wages and a high turnover of workers. The empirical basis is formed by company case studies in the meat industry, postal services, and mask production in Germany and Austria. This paper discusses the significance of different locations (at and beyond the workplace) and forms (‘exit’ and ‘voice’) of labour unrest in sectors of the economy that are characterised by a predominance of the use of migrant labour. It questions how conflicts over migrant labour have been articulated and possibly changed in the pandemic, and what factors may have contributed not only to an upsurge but also to the containment, regulation, and repression, of labour unrest.

There is growing recognition of the need for a more ‘socially just’ implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) that embraces bottom-up, rights holder-driven approaches.1 An initiative is underway to articulate a set of community principles to supplement the three-pillar ‘respect, protect, remedy’ framework of the UNGPs, with a fourth pillar that underscores the importance of rights holder agency to the effective implementation of human rights protections.2 With regard to access to remedy, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has emphasized that ‘rights holders should be central to the entire remedy process’,3 and others have made similar observations, encouraging a ‘co-design’ process.4

This article explores the enactment of a right to strike in the Australian federal industrial relations system in order to ascertain what the legislation reveals about the commitment of successive federal governments to the principles of voluntary collective bargaining. The article reflects briefly on Australia’s international obligations to respect the right to strike under ILO and UN Conventions before outlining the main features of protected industrial action under the federal system from 1993 through to the passage of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). The discussion reveals that the right to strike in Australia is very limited, particularly with respect to the content and level of agreement making that may be supported by protected industrial action. Focusing on multi-enterprise agreement making in particular, the article concludes that the current legislative regime does not permit industrial parties to determine their own industrial agendas and support those agendas through protected industrial action.

The article considers the place of Working Holiday visas in Australia’s migration policy and socio-economic planning. With the number of Working Holiday visa grants now topping 200,000 annually, Working Holiday Makers are significant participants in low-skilled work in Australia. The article argues that the programme is not adequately regulated to protect Working Holiday Makers in this work. In light of concerns around the exploitation of Working Holiday Makers, the article offers suggestions for reform to the programme. The article argues that the programme should be returned to its original conception of fostering a cultural experience for young migrants coming to Australia. It argues that work entitlements under the Working Holiday visa should be limited to work that is appropriate for young migrants on a brief cultural visit and that labour shortages should otherwise be filled using dedicated temporary labour migration visas which are properly designed to address labour shortages in the economy. Reform is necessary to protect the work conditions of local and migrant workers, to maintain Australia’s reputation as a country with high employment standards and to maintain positive relations with countries in the Working Holiday programme.

This article argues for domestic legislative regulation of global value chains to protect offshore workers. First, it outlines the policy reasons necessitating such legislation. Empirical evidence confirms that global value chains are a dominant feature of the global economy. It is contended that lead firms wield influence in global value chains in a manner which leads to poor outcomes for offshore workers. Second, the article sets out the minimum steps necessary for a domestic state to attribute the responsibility for transparency of global value chains to lead firms. Then, it proceeds to explore the possibilities and limits of the proposed scheme of regulation. Despite some complexities with implementing the scheme, it is argued that if domestic legislative regulation of global value chains strengthens even to a small extent the monitoring of global labour issues, it is worth pursuing.

This article discusses sexual harassment in the east African cut-flower and horticultural industry, based on research on 62 farms in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It argues that sexual harassment is fostered both by coercive labour conditions within global value chains and by existing hierarchical gender relations. The research finds that harassment is widespread, that many lack a vocabulary to describe or discuss this, and that female casual and temporary workers are most likely to be targeted. Action research coupled with organisation of workers, however, has been effective in giving ‘voice’ to those suffering harassment: this is a first step in a feminist labour mobilisation and policy formulation. Procedures against sexual harassment are beginning to be formulated: a key concern is implementation. Addressing sexual harassment is central in ensuring the security of working people, particularly the most marginalised.

The Your Rights at Work Campaign in the lead-up to the 2007 Australian federal election successfully mobilised a groundswell of community opposition to the radically anti-union Work Choices employment relations legislation of 2005. There were hopes that its successor, the 2009 Fair Work Act, would usher in a new regime of good-faith workplace relations, support for collective bargaining and vulnerable workers’ access to enforceable labour rights. Major gaps are the failure to address workplace power imbalance, especially in small workplaces, and lack of support for employee participation and voice mechanisms. A case is made for the inclusion of such mechanisms in legislative National Employment Standards. The article concludes by arguing that it is a mistake for unions to expect too much from legislation, rather than investing in the pursuit of the sort of community alliances which, after all, have made a restoration of Work Choices untenable.

In the context of the working-class backlash against free trade represented by Brexit, the recent surge of right-wing political parties in Europe and the 2016 US presidential election, it is timely to take stock of the threats to jobs and wages posed by recent negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The European Commission selectively relied on econometric analyses, predicting a positive impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Its proposed legal text on ‘Trade and sustainable development’ fell short of the European Parliament’s negotiating guidelines, which themselves failed to ensure protection of labour standards. The activities of corporate lobbies threatened the effective protection of workers’ rights. Major risks to workers’ rights are posed by discrepancies between US and European Union labour and social law and labour standards. The most recent legal text lacks compliance monitoring provisions and sanction mechanisms against member states failing to ratify core labour conventions. The investment court system does not resolve the problems of the discredited investor-state dispute settlement mechanism for which it is the proposed replacement. The year 2016 has provided a foretaste of the dislocation likely from trade and investment regulation that sees social and environmental standards and labour rights simply as barriers to corporate profits.

At first glance, Part 3–1 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) seems to overlap with long-established anti-discrimination laws, offering protection against adverse, attribute-based conduct in employment. On close analysis, however, it turns out to be a new and quite different regime. Although the Fair Work Act offers a simple alternative to dated and complicated anti-discrimination laws, its provisions are at times overly-simple, raising uncertainty about how they will operate. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the approach to discrimination protection in the Fair Work Act, while an important addition to the remedies available to Australian workers, is compromised by failing to take account of lessons learned in the long history of anti-discrimination law.

This non-refereed article is adapted from the paper presented on 21 August 2009 by Ms Angela Zhang, to the symposium, The Fair Work Act: Promises, Potential, Protections and Pitfalls. This symposium was designed to bring academic analysis together with voices representing low-paid workers. The community organisation Asian Women at Work, based in western and south western Sydney, believes that legislative reform will bring greater fairness at work only if it is accompanied by a concerted multilingual campaign to educate women of their legal rights at work, and their sources of redress. Employer education, union right of workplace entry, and an effective inspection regime are also crucial. The legislated minimum conditions in the National Employment Standards are seen as being set too low to offer real protection. Even if low-paid workers could access the new collective bargaining stream, the Individual Flexibility Arrangements that are mandatory in every collective agreement are likely simply to continue employers’ power to dictate working arrangements. Whilst the Act improves the regulation of unfair dismissal, many migrant women will remain unprotected, because of small business exemptions. Nevertheless, in coming together to lobby and campaign, the women have found a source of strength and power.

Across the United States (US), farmworkers and their allies are mobilizing to encourage companies to join a Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) program. On May Day, hundreds marched in support of Migrant Justice’s campaign to convince the Hannaford supermarket chain to join the Milk With Dignity program, a WSR program focused on working conditions in the dairy industry.1 At the most recent annual shareholder meeting of Wendy’s, a US-based fast food franchise, several members of the board of directors faced opposition to renewal of their positions in response to what some shareholders perceived as Wendy’s inadequate disclosure on its efforts to protect workers in its supply chain.2 The opposition forms part of a years-long campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and its allies to convince Wendy’s to join the Fair Food Program, the inaugural WSR program.3