This paper is a comparative exploratory study of the changing nature of employee voice through trade union representation in the retail industry in the UK and Australia. In both countries, the retail industry is a major employer and is one of the few private sector service industries with...

This article explores the diverging roles of leftwing parties and trade unions in determining active labor market program (ALMP) spending. We argue that unions today increasingly take into account the distinct re-employability worries of their members. Rather than as a labor market outsider...

In the context of a growing detachment of workers from organizations and from traditional forms of interest representation, social networks are considered as an important means of individual risk-coping and for union strategies to improve working conditions and organize workers’ interests. To...

The Insider-Outsider theory is an attempt, through the Labour Turnover Costs (LTC), to explain the clash of interests between different employees – insiders and outsiders. My claim is that the most important factor that has shaped the insider and outsider status among construction employees at...

Retail is a major employing industry across all nations. In the case of Australia, the retail industry employs almost fifteen per cent of the workforce (ABS 6291.0.55.001). Retail is an industry that has been slow to attract research attention. Within the last decade though, a growing body of...

In nine cases of firms which closed, productivity increases were experienced after negotiations with the affected employees were finalised, up until the final day. This productivity change is known as ‘the closedown effect’. Possible explanations for this effect reveals, contrary to the...

Much of the literature on clusters has focused on the economic advantages of clusters and how these can be achieved in terms of competition, regional development and local spillovers. Some studies have focused at the level of the individual firm however human resource management (HRM) in...

the built environment. The planned successor to this CRC – the Sustainable Built Environment Centre will further progress environmental sustainability for the built environment as the Centre’s future is confirmed in early 2009. We would like to thank the Senate Committee for the opportunity...

This article reports on a study undertaken to investigate the effect of the NSW Industrial Relations Act 1991 upon a sample of small business enterprises drawn from the North Coast region of NSW. Empirical data for the study was collected through a questionnaire distributed to eighty small...

Wage(1) flexibility is of particular importance for the hospitality industry, since wages are usually its largest single cost item. The payment of penalty rates is another important issue facing the industry. The critics of Australia's centralised industrial relations system, such as the...