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An increasing number of Western scholars are currently arguing that socialist transition theory may provide solutions to industrial relations and management problems that capitalism struggles to resolve. I add to this effort by introducing the debate on whether scientific management could assist the transition from capitalism to socialism that was undertaken in the United States through the first two decades of the 20th century. By so doing, I make two contributions. First, I show that socialist theory has a substantial lineage within management studies from which current progressives might draw lessons. Second, I add to the literature that has problematised the authoritarian depiction of Taylorism that is orthodoxy in the management and industrial relations literature. I do so by showing that a significant body of theorists and practitioners believed scientific management could assist populations to move beyond capitalism. Some welcomed this possibility, while others viewed it as a dire threat, requiring that Taylorism be demonised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since regaining its independence in 1991, Lithuania has undergone a process of chaotic privatization in which labor was systematically disempowered, above all, by the targeted erosion of labor rights formally endorsed in the pre-existing Soviet labor code. In the newly legitimized and aggressive pro-business environment of the post-Soviet era, organized labor's residual power was seen as an anachronistic impediment to the power of capital in reshaping society and the economy. This article investigates the political dynamics of disembedded labor law reform in Lithuania, which enabled neoliberal reformers to legislate while disregarding broader societal interests and imposing unilateral changes in labor relations. A content analysis of 852 news media reports on labor law reforms published in 2014–2016 was used to demonstrate how discursive and institutional exclusion and sequencing were employed by the neoliberal government to circumvent the interests of major social and economic groups, resulting in the passage of pro-business legislation. The implications of resorting to disembedded politics in the labor reform process are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Union leaders dedicate a significant amount of their time to unions, and in some cases, their entire life. Scholarly literature has made great progress in identifying the individual and mesolevel variables that explain how this type of union participation begins and continues. Yet it has paid little attention to the role played by the national industrial relations system in these processes. Drawing on the concept of "union career," this article shows that the national regulations and the union power shape the characteristics and development of union leaders' participation. Based on an in-depth interview program, a survey and a review of the press in Chile, it examines how neoliberal reforms implemented since 1979 changed the resources and opportunities available to workers to assume, manage, and maintain union positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature commonly links the role of informality in collective bargaining to industrial relations systems based on voluntarism and decentralized negotiation settings. According to this view, informal processes won't exist or at best play a marginal role in institutionally strong industrial relations systems, where formal rules define the roles, rights and duties of actors in the system. Yet, even in highly regulated contexts, formal and informal mechanisms very often co-exist and complement each other to help reach agreements or solve conflicts among actors. A relational approach and social network analysis applied to the study of the retail sector in Italy, Netherlands and Spain allows to understand the role of informality in countries with different industrial relations regimes. The analysis shows the importance of informal interactions and events in all countries, irrespectively of the industrial relations regime, and confirms the positive contribution of relational approaches to the study of collective bargaining linking with the literature on the embeddedness theory and structural holes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article Employment stability and decent work published in the Journal of Industrial Relations by Murphy and Turner presents evidence forming the basis of a claim that job instability has not increased in Ireland between 1998 and 2021. This contrasts with a rich literature in industrial relations and the sociology of work and organizations, which documents the fundamental transformation of employment relationships since the 1990s toward greater insecurity. In this response paper, I question the empirical foundations of Murphy and Turner's claims. Analyzing the same data set used in their study, I provide clear evidence that an increase in job instability consistent with the precarious work literature has been hiding in plain sight. I also engage with their efforts at theorizing the nature of the recent transformation of employment relationships in Ireland specifically, and in Liberal Market Economies more broadly. In doing so, I suggest research avenues that go beyond a polarized debate in whether or not job instability has increased in order to contribute to a more complex understanding of contemporary changes in career trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes a mutual gains perspective to investigate how a labour‒management partnership (LMP) impacts organisational occupational and health safety (OHS) performance and creates a safe workplace. It develops a model linking employee psychological safety with a collaborative industrial relations (IR) climate and ultimately organisational OHS performance. The research context is China ‒ where LMP is driven by the Party-state in managing labour relations. To test the proposed linkage model, multi-level structural equation modelling is conducted, using matched employer‒employee data from 205 companies and 7229 employees in an industrial park in the Yangtze River Delta. The results support the use of the linkage model, demonstrating that partnership decision-making increases psychological safety, in turn developing a collaborative IR climate, ultimately reducing the number of accidents. This study contributes to partnership research by exploring the underlying mechanisms of how a partnership arising from the logic of neo-pluralism successfully delivers mutual gains for employees and employers in a non-pluralist context. It has wider implications for collaborative management and OHS management in a developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2022 saw a slight increase in the willingness of unions to use or prepare to use industrial action as part of collective bargaining. However, pay rises for employees covered by enterprise agreements generally lagged those received by the broader workforce. Employees on average saw a significant cut in their real wages. Towards the end of 2022, the recently elected Albanese government made several changes to the bargaining provisions contained in the Fair Work Act 2010 (the FW Act) with the explicit goal of increasing the pace of wage rises. By increasing union bargaining power, it is likely that these amendments will eventually lead to a higher rate of wage growth than would otherwise be the case, though a number of factors may limit likely size of any such effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raymond Arthur Markey will be remembered as one of Australia's leading labour historians and industrial relations scholars as well as a much-appreciated mentor to research students and early career academics, and a thoughtful, collaborative and supportive colleague. Ray's major research contributions spanned labour history, employee participation and voice, comparative industrial relations and labour history, and contemporary industrial relations policy issues. During his tenure at the University of Wollongong, Ray also convened the Industrial Relations Programme between 1979 and 2005 and was the Founding Director of the Centre for Work and Labour Market Studies at the University from 1987 to 2004. Ray also engaged in and influenced the development of a comparative approach to labour history in Australia. [Extracted from the article]

While online platforms were initially applauded for improving services in a range of sectors, they are currently being criticized for ignoring laws and regulations. We analyse the evolution of Helpling – the largest domestic cleaning platform company in Europe – by focusing on the ways that Helpling has adapted its platform to regulations in five national contexts (France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). Using data on changing Terms and Conditions, we show that Helpling initially tried to introduce a single business model across Europe, but quickly started to adapt to national regulatory contexts. Informed by arguments on 'varieties of capitalism' in Europe, we base our case study on a comparison of the different national trajectories pursued by Helpling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coalition governments from 1996, and Labor governments from 2007, developed guidelines for agreement-making for line APS agency managers that required agency agreements to be consistent with the government's overall industrial relations policies and to be funded within APS agency appropriations. Along with many Australian academics, John's research from the early 1990s focused on analysing industrial relations policy debates promoting the decentralisation of the Australian industrial relations system. John Michael O'Brien was an engaging university lecturer and a leading scholar of public sector employment relations and education union history who died in January 2023 following a lengthy period of ill health. [Extracted from the article]

It is often assumed that the ideological dominance of neoliberalism has profoundly altered job security and long-term employment relationships. Such claims of a more unstable and insecure jobs market in the twenty-first century are the focus of this paper. Using Labour Force Survey data employment stability in the private sector over more than 20 years in Ireland is examined. As a liberal market economy, Ireland represents a fitting context in which to examine this issue given that it is one of the world's most globalised economies and among the most severely affected by the global financial crisis. Assertions of a more unstable and insecure labour market are not in the main supported by our findings. Reasons suggested for the persistence of a stable employment regime are the continued strategic institutional role of trade unions in influencing regulation, and the interest of employers in retaining skilled employees. However, the emergence of the challenging economic conditions since the pandemic may challenge trade union capacity and employer support for such stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Union responses to the liberalization of the political economy are often portrayed as either beating the same drum for decades or retreating into the defence of an increasingly small group of core workers. This article argues otherwise. A longitudinal ideational analysis of collective bargaining documents issued between 1976 and 2021 by the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV) shows that the Federation has gradually adapted its Keynesian-inspired interests to a more market-oriented understanding of the labor market, wages, and employment, legitimized by Third Way ideology in the 1990s. During the 2010s the union returns to Keynesian thinking. The findings suggest that the ideological conversion of the trade union movement may have been more significant than currently realized in explaining the liberalization of the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is growing scholarly interest in work conditions in China's internet industry, many studies have focused exclusively on corporate employment relations strategies. By contrast, the article demonstrates the Chinese government's significant role in shaping the collective work experience in business reality. Drawing on three months of fieldwork in China, the findings suggest that the state's quest for technology supremacy has resulted in internet companies that compete ferociously, which in turn causes extreme working hours and burnout. The censorship of online labour activism and the ambiguity in court decisions also lower the interest of tech workers in organising and defending their labour rights. This study opens up an evidence-based debate on industrial relations in contemporary China and calls for more discussions on the state's role in shaping worker well-being and protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A short health workers' strike held in early 2020 in Hong Kong at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates the importance of democratic framing of social movement unionism. A trade union was established during a period of massive civil unrest against the local government in 2019 and then proceeded to organise a strike within 2 months of formation to pressure both their employer and the government to enhance citizen and health workers' safety as the pandemic entered Hong Kong. The paper explains the organisation, progress and reaction to the strike by different stakeholders. The case exemplifies mobilisation through strong democratic trade unionism and provides an example of social movement framing that combined membership and societal interests. The strike represents the last instance of successful independent union mobilisation in Hong Kong as governance shifted from laisse-faire industrial relations that favoured the local capitalist elite to state authoritarianism focussed on obedience to the national political elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on mostly unpublished ABS data to address three related questions: (1) How can we approximate the number of genuinely flexible casual employees? (2) What are the characteristics of work where employees are, or are not, likely to be genuinely flexible casuals? and (3) How many employees are compensated for the disutility of casual employment? Only 6 per cent of leave-deprived workers (1.4% of all employees) are 'narrowly-defined casuals'. The majority of leave-deprived workers have been with their employer for over a year. The majority expect to be with the same employer over a year into the future. Around half have stable hours from one week to the next and are not on standby. The characteristics of leave-deprived employees do not appear to be those of flexible, casual employment relationships. The common feature appears to be low power. Employers may have the ability to deploy them in all sorts of flexible ways, but often do not need to utilise that flexibility. The popular term 'permanent casual' is more accurately phrased as 'permanently insecure'. The high rate of 'casual' employment enables Australia to have an internationally low level of leave coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge co-production between academics and practitioners is increasingly a focus for university workplace contexts. While there is emerging interest in how social science academics can engage with industry to generate impact, little attention has been paid to how one form of practitioner organisation, trade unions, engages with academics to influence policy and member outcomes. In this article, we examine a case of research collaboration with an education trade union based in New South Wales, Australia, to explore the process of knowledge co-production with this partnership and its impact on education policy. In examining this decade-long partnership, we contribute to the literature on union strategy by depicting collaboration with researchers as a unique strategy for influencing policy outcomes (in this case, addressing teacher workload), while also contributing to emerging scholarship on knowledge co-production as a means to generate impact beyond the academy. As such, this article contributes a rare example of 'cross-over' between the worlds of academia and industry, which may inform future engagement and impact processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores the revitalisation strategies developed by a company-level trade union in the food manufacturing industry in Chile. Using qualitative research and building on a case study, the findings suggest that predominant renewal strategies were restructuring through mergers, a variation on the Anglo-Saxon labour-management partnership, and organising based on recruiting new members and legal mobilization. The article argues that these revitalisation strategies were implemented in relation to the deployment of the employer's trade union weakening strategies, this being the central feature that drove the renewal capabilities of the researched trade union. The article contributes to enlarge the understanding of the way employer strategies and regulatory contexts shape the union revitalization framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does climate change mean for the field of industrial relations? In this article, we argue that a meaningful disciplinary response to climate change requires more than simply widening the scope of industrial relations scholarship to include environmental dynamics. It demands recognition of the ways in which the categories of analysis and intellectual preoccupations of the discipline have been shaped by what we term the 'fossil capitalist inertia' exerted by their largely 20th-century origins. Climate change requires critical reflection of the extent to which industrial relations processes that were introduced to increase fairness and equality in a fossil capitalist context have the potential to contribute to different kinds of unfairness and inequality in an era of climate instability. The article identifies four frontiers of the scholarly development already underway that give effect to this conceptual enlargement: critical engagement with the concepts of (a) 'sustainable development' and (b) 'just transition' (c) analyses of reconfigured union identities and strategies and (d) discussions of the roles and influence of employer associations and state actors in labour and environmental relations and transitions. The article concludes by introducing five new articles that advance existing scholarly reflections on the challenge of a changed climate for industrial relations along each of these frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the important, yet under-examined, issue of green workforce development and industrial relations and the role of unions and workers in shaping a transition to a green economy. Based on interviews with labour leaders and rank-and-file workers in the auto manufacturing sector in Ontario, Canada, this article interrogates how environmentalism and climate change potentially construct a sense of purpose among heterogenous union members, particularly in the context of decreasing union power, de-industrialization and neoliberalism. In order to understand how climate change can shape union purpose, we investigate how a diverse range of union members – beyond leaders – understand climate change and the appropriate strategies to address it and how this sustains or hinders collective identity within the union. We argue that understanding internal differences in collective identities is key for unions to start to rebuild power resources. Our research demonstrates that future union success and solidarity among workers might be dependent on the ability of unions to recognize and negotiate multiple collective identities. By incorporating innovations into the union, a more flexible and multi-dimensional collective identity regarding labour environmentalism could be built and sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay builds on the contributions to this special issue to advance a historical relational approach to labour studies, industrial relations, and Environmental Labour Studies (ELS) while differentiating it from the interactional approaches currently dominant. Central to this choice is that relational approaches provide more empirically compelling explanations of the choices of labour, capital, and state because they take into account that the choices of these social entities are embedded within their mutual and uneven constitution. From that starting point I reflect upon the five articles in this special issue on climate change and industrial relations and examine how I see them contributing to such a relational approach even though it is not their explicit strategy. I close by briefly restating my view that a historical relational approach is empirically more complete while alerting us to our axiological and epistemological preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While this article commences with apologies issued on 8 February 2022 in the Commonwealth Parliament in respect of alleged sexual harassment, workplace bullying and sexual assault, its focus is on the drivers behind and implications of the Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Act 2021 (Cth). Both flowed from reviews conducted by the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, and both were propelled by a need to address historical deficiencies and inequalities in workplace practice and culture leading to what is described now by the leader of the Opposition as 'unsafe' and 'disrespectful' workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the year across collective bargaining, union policy and strategy, as well as industrial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the industrial environment rebounded slightly from the initial impact of the pandemic in 2020, similar themes persisted throughout 2021, including declining coverage of employees under collective agreements, a difficult bargaining environment in 'essential' industries, limited cooperation of the industrial relations parties during developments in the pandemic response and a continued pattern of low wages growth. While trade unions achieved isolated 'wins' on key matters, at a system level there continues to be enduring issues of low wages, insecure work and frustrations with the collective bargaining system, while the nation attempts to recover from the impact of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For employers and their associations, 2021 began with the prospect of significant industrial relation change and a return to business as usual. However, the enduring implications of the pandemic, and defeat of many employer-supported aspects of the Coalition Government's legislative changes in the Senate, quickly dashed these dreams. Through a review of public submissions, media reports and interviews, this article explores the key activities and interests of employers and their associations throughout 2021. This year saw welcomed clarity regarding casual employment, renewed government interest in (if not support for) skilled migration, and through the enhanced use of online communication platforms, the opportunity for better member–association relationships. As the year progressed, employer attention shifted back to the pandemic, and more specifically, the challenge of managing vaccine mandates. For employers and their associations, 2021 was then a year of mixed results and enduring uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2021 has been momentous for women at work in Australia. Two key themes loom large: first, the highly gendered impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on paid and unpaid work, and second, the ongoing crisis of persistent gender-based disrespect and violence in Australian workplaces. Both have prompted escalating demands for change to provide women with better jobs, improve the balance between work and care, and ensure more respect at work. This article examines these issues, briefly analyses the 2021–22 Federal Budget and parental leave policy in Australia a decade after a national scheme commenced, and foreshadows several issues on women and work to watch in 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working from home expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. This Controversy examines how working from home was framed and regulated pre-pandemic. We contrast this with the changes made to Australia's industrial award system during the pandemic to increase flexibilities around working from home, in response to a collective need for a responsive safety net. We argue that the conception and regulation of working from home is shifting from an individual flexibility, to a 'collective flexibility' available to a wide array of workers, collectively negotiated and governed by increased regulation. While industrial instruments were varied to accommodate public health requirements and the need of organisations and employees to work from home, these shifts were temporary. We argue that working from home provisions should rightly be regulated as a collective entitlement. We therefore consider possible ways forward in regulating this form of working, drawing from international developments. We raise these issues to extend debates around how working from home can be regulated to benefit employers and employees as we move towards COVID-normal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'modern slavery' constitutes a broad non-legal umbrella term that refers to a range of abusive practices including, but not limited to, forced labour, bonded labour, human trafficking and child slavery. While the most severe forms of labour exploitation represent instances of modern slavery, focusing on labour abuses more broadly is also important as it is not always clear at what point non-compliance with labour standards seeps into cases of criminal exploitation. This Special Issue focuses on what the large- and small-scale risk factors are that can cause working conditions to deteriorate, on how people can become trapped in exploitative conditions and on what can be done to prevent and remedy labour abuses. It does this by exploring the macro-level, specifically by examining global value chains and the labour exploitation within the global production regime; by exploring the meso-level, by focusing on the market-based character of business and human rights regulation; and by looking at the micro-level by examining labour regimes on factory floors and in private residences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, industrial relations scholarship has observed a trend towards an increasingly punitive industrial environment along with the 're-regulation' of labour law. Absent from much of this literature, however, has been an empirical and historical measurement or comparison of the scale and quality of this systemic change. By surveying coercive and penal federal industrial legislation over the period 1901–2020, this study shows empirically that over the last 40 years, there has been a steep increase in the amount of coercive federal labour legislation in Australia. It further measures and compares the volume of coercive labour legislation enacted specifically against 'labour' and 'capital' or both throughout the same period (1901–2020). Analysis reveals a correlation between a high volume of coercive labour legislation with low levels of trade union power and organisation. Argued here is that coercive labour legislation has been crucial to transitioning from a liberal conciliation and arbitration model of Australian industrial relations towards a neoliberal framework of employment legislation. In the former, regulation was more collective, informal and egalitarian (embodied by the sociological concept of 'associative democracy'). Under a neoliberal framework, regulation is now more individualised, technical, punitive and rarely enforced, resulting in less equal material outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent contribution in this journal, Mark Bray, Shae McCrystal and Leslee Spiess posed the question, 'Why doesn't anyone talk about non-union collective agreements?' Surveying business, government and union perspectives, the authors identified the need for greater attention and research to understand their effect on contemporary Australian industrial relations. This article serves as a response to this concern. Two case studies illustrate how non-union agreements work in practice under the Fair Work Act 2009. We outline further examples of how unions have been talking about non-union agreements through a legal and policy strategy rather than public advocacy. Assessing employer motivations for pursuing non-union agreements, as well as bargaining outcomes for workers, we conclude that there is an urgent need for reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how Southern European workers create bricolage by combining creatively organized practices of collective action, such as those of conventional labor unions, with self-created practices when facing oppressive labor relations and widespread downgrading of social mobility. We compare two cases of networks formed by Spanish and Italian migrant workers in Berlin: the Grupo de Acción Sindical and Berlin Migrant Strikers. Drawing on an ethnographic study of these groups, the article argues that the networks have different logics of action and political strategies. Their dissimilarities are manifested in different outcomes and organizational dimensions. Key factors include their founding members' social and activist backgrounds and leaders' countries of origin. It can be argued that, through these networks, migrants produce and reproduce political practices and collective actions, shaping a transnational social space that connects migrants and non-migrant individuals and organizations from both origin and destination countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional actors such as trade unions are inevitably challenged by digital technologies, not only from the perspective of labor relations, but also in relation to outreach and communications strategies. In fact, as online and offline realities become increasingly intertwined, the presence of organized labor institutions within the Internet's current networked environment is unavoidable. This article debates digital trade unionism as a strategy for trade union renewal, particularly the implications of using social media platforms to connect and interact with a broader audience beyond the labor movement. Through a comprehensive comparative analysis of the Facebook pages of six trade union confederations from Brazil, Canada, Portugal, and the UK, we find that despite the possibilities for horizontal dialogue enabled by the new digital communication and information technologies, trade union confederations maintain an outdated 'one-way' model of communication, hindering opportunities to reach and engage with both union and non-union actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests the employment impact of recent reductions in Australian wage premiums, or penalty rates, using surveys of 1828 employees and 236 employers in Retail and Hospitality sectors. In applying wage premium reductions for Sunday work, the national regulator, the Fair Work Commission, anticipated improvements in trading hours, employment and hours worked as a consequence. However, the authors found no statistically significant evidence for these predictions. Nor did difference-in-differences methods indicate substitution of workers subject to cuts for those who were exempt. The authors present the first systematic purpose-designed empirical evidence on the employment impact of wage premiums. In the absence of empirical evidence, the regulator had referred substantially to minimum wage research. This study also has implications for minimum wage research, and contributes to it with a novel methodology examining both aggregate hours and employment, comparing those subject to cuts with those not, and surveying both employees and employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is aimed to contribute to our knowledge regarding employer and employee preferences about employment security and unemployment income protection as well as the degree of neoliberal change during the last decades through the lens of collective bargaining. It charts the institutional–historical development of an Employment Transition Agreement (ETA) between the bargaining cartel for white-collar unions, PTK, and the organisation for private employers, SAF/SN. ETAs are a form of institution through which Swedish trade unions and employer organisations give employees added protection in the event of redundancies, mostly in the form of added income protection but also matching services and shorter training programmes. Drawing from archival material and published statements in newspapers, the article engages with what the organisations wanted from such agreements during negotiations and how this shifted during the decades. The results show that the agreements have given employees added unemployment income protection while at the same time giving employees greater flexibility during collective lay-offs. It also shows how the agreement initially was more focused on employment security and proactive investments in skills. But when the balance of power shifted in favour of employers, PTK had to give up any such ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article asks 'where are we' in the study of work–life balance within Industrial Relations and 'where to next' if we are to identify levers for positive change in workplace gender equality as technology brings the potential for smoothing or disrupting how women and men from different class groups work and care. It first shines a classed lens on the mainstream work–life balance agenda to pinpoint limitations in its heavy focus on the time squeezes reported by financially secure middle-class workers and its neglect of money matters. Then, via an enhanced conceptualisation, the article considers the ramifications of the growth in gig work for work–life balance. Gig work is promoted as offering flexibility and autonomy, enabling carers to work and care, but it is performed without the safety nets that are more common in formal employment. It can bring unpredictability in both work-time and income, work intensification and financial hardship that all impact work–life balance. 'Where to next' is developing a more inclusive approach that recognises gender, class and other types of diversity in order to lever workplace gender equality for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the Journal of Industrial Relations ' 2020 Annual Review of Industrial Relations provides an overview of the six Annual Review articles, an international review and two practitioner reviews. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a crisis for the labour market, intensifying serious existing issues such as stagnant wage growth, the gender pay gap and employer non-compliance with minimum wage laws. The pandemic also presented an opportunity for the Australian government to direct its economic stimulus measures in a targeted manner that addressed these existing problems concurrently with the immediate pandemic-related issues. However, 2020 will be marked by this missed opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic drove significant changes affecting women, work and industrial relations in Australia in 2020. This annual review explores the economic and social impact of the pandemic on women workers, and examines the gendered impact of key policy responses, including: the introduction of an historic temporary wage subsidy programme; the early release of superannuation funds; multiple economic stimulus measures, targeted mostly at male-dominated industries; and the provision of paid pandemic leave. This review also analyses major developments in early childhood care and education and aged care, and the longer-term implications of the massive natural experiment in working from home that occurred in 2020. Developments in paid parental leave and sexual harassment are also briefly discussed. We find that, although women workers were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, policy responses to date have largely failed to acknowledge or repair the gendered impacts of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 caused sudden and serious damage to the Australian economy. The effects have been spread unevenly, and highlighted the shortcomings of over-reliance on insecure forms of work. The lack of any form of paid leave for casual and other insecure workers undermined the public health response, and was emblematic of the broader consequences of insecurity. Despite its limitations, Australia's industrial relations system responded to the challenges of the pandemic in a way that less regulated and 'decentralised' systems would not have been able to. This article argues that the union movement was critical to Australia's successful response, and that the award system proved to be an adaptable mechanism to deliver change at a national level while ensuring that the representative voice of workers was heard, and basic industrial protections were not jettisoned. Industry bargaining would have also been a beneficial tool to deal with economy-wide issues of this kind. The article urges that the lessons of the pandemic be learned as we move to a recovery phase and that we ensure there are more secure jobs, better bargaining rights and improvements to basic protections to ensure that workers' rights are not eroded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the key challenges of 2020 from the perspective of employers, how employers worked to respond to the pandemic and recession, and to position Australia's industrial system for the future. It examines various key developments, positive and negative, from the perspective of employers throughout 2020, before concluding on the prospects for starting to genuinely reform Australia's industrial relations system in 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emphasis of employers and employer associations, when 2020 began, was largely business as usual. With the pandemic's advent, employers and associations reoriented some industrial relations activity, which encouraged cooperation while also highlighting sharp divisions. As the year progressed, however, it became increasingly apparent that the federal government's responses to the pandemic provided unanticipated opportunities for the employer movement to push intensively their long-expressed desires for changes to the institutional structures of industrial relations, and hence also bargaining and other processes. This article examines these and other activities which preoccupied employers and their associations in 2020 while also analysing some broader environmental, social and governance challenges affecting employer groups, which impact on their purpose and place within the employer movement more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The labour market effects in Southeast Asia of the COVID-19 pandemic have attracted considerable analysis from both scholars and practitioners. However, much less attention has been paid to the pandemic's impact on legal protections for workers' and unions' rights, or to what might account for divergent outcomes in this respect in economies that share many characteristics, including a strong export orientation in labour-intensive industries and weak industrial relations institutions. Having described the public health measures taken to control the spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, this article analyses governments' employment-related responses and their impact on workers and unions in the first year of the pandemic. Based on this analysis, we conclude that the disruption caused to these countries' economies, and societies, served to reproduce existing patterns of state–labour relations rather than overturning them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'frames of reference' concept has been a significant and enduring feature of industrial/employment relations since being developed by Alan Fox; and yet there has been only limited scholarly research seeking to develop the frames. We introduce this special issue by reviewing the extant literature on frames which provides a backdrop to the five article contributions that explore the frames in both new and historical light. The special issues ask the following questions: Do the traditional frames continue to provide insights into the perceptions and behaviour of employers and employees? If not, how might existing frames be broadened by new (or indeed historical) developments and insights? A re-examination of frames of reference is both important and timely given the many changes currently impacting work and employment. Our hope is that by reflecting on and celebrating the influence of Alan Fox on our thinking, we can also chart a forward-looking research agenda that continues to use his insights and apply them to the field as well as developing and continuing to engage with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies the concept of frames of reference to contemporary work and welfare dynamics by focusing on the growing relevance of company welfare in Italy after the 2008 crisis. The analysis considers how this occurred along three phases: in the first, a path-breaking case, Luxottica, demonstrates the potential of company welfare; then, Renzi's government promotes company welfare through tax breaks; finally, trade unions try to affect the diffusion of company welfare, displaying contrasting ideologies as well as pragmatic joint solutions in the process. Overall, two contiguous sub-frames – consultative unitarism and collaborative pluralism – offer the mainstream justification to the events and the policy debate around them, a debate in which the industrial relations scholarship played a key role. However, a critical interpretation is present too, suggesting that the relevance of company welfare is driven by the mobilisation of a political and economic elite and results in few cases of positive employment relations alongside broad social and economic imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frames of reference model developed by Fox, and extended by a number of other authors, is arguably the central paradigm framework in the employment/industrial relations field. Despite its importance and popularity, use of frames of reference to structure empirical analysis and develop hypotheses is relatively rare and, to the best of our knowledge, the framework and its key constructs and principles have themselves never been empirically examined with data from a representative cross-section of workplaces using quantitative methods. This article, with the aid of a new four-country (Australia, Canada, UK, and US) survey data set on 7000+ workplaces, initiates this kind of empirical study. The frames of reference distinguish three main types of employment relationships: unitarist, pluralist, radical. We select six attitudinal/behavioral indicators from the data set that distinguish which frame a workplace is in, combine them to form a Relational Quality Index, plot the 7000+ Relational Quality Index observations as four-country frequency distributions, and use different statistical criteria to indicate the relative size of each frame. We next do regression analysis in which the 7000+ workplace Relational Quality Index scores are the dependent variable and construct from the data set 20 frames of reference explanatory variables. As theory predicts, workplaces with stronger common (opposed) interests have better (worse) employer–employee relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]