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A key thrust of labour market policy in Australia and many other western countries is that long-term unemployed people lack the personal motivation to engage proactively and successfully in the search for paid employment. In this paper we argue that the implementation of what are experienced as paternal workfare programs are counter-productive to achieving the official policy goal of improving self-efficacy and gaining paid employment. The empirical discussion presented in the paper is based on a semi-longitudinal study that tracked 75 long-term unemployed people in three different labour markets in Australia between 2005-2007. The study was funded by the Australian Research Council and Jobs Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For parents there can be negative aspects of how work `spills over' to family. This analysis focuses on mothers of young children and considers how aspects of work-to-family strain differ for single and couple mothers. While there has been increased focus on the work-family strains of mothers, less is known about single mothers and their experience of work-family strain. We might expect that single mothers would have more difficulty in combining work and family, given that they do not have the support of a resident partner to assist with childrearing responsibilities. This paper explores the relationships between several demographic, employment and supports factors and work-family strain, It also examines whether these associations are different according to family form; that is, whether certain factors make the work-family balance significantly worse or better for single mothers than for otherwise similar couple-parent mothers. The analysis is based on the 2004 Growing up in Australia: the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). This dataset contains detailed family and child data for around 10,000 families, all with at least one child aged 5 or under. With such a large sample size, the number of single mothers is sufficiently large to enable more analyses than is often possible from survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugees are forced to leave their homes and countries to start anew in a different place. This paper outlines the key challenges and issues facing those Australian regional communities focussing on refugee relocation projects as a labour and population renewal strategy. This discussion arises from a two year evaluation project which examined two refugee relocation projects in the communities of Swan Hill and Warrnambool situated in different regional areas of Victoria, Australia. The project was supported with funds from VicHealth, a statutory body funded by the Victorian State Government with a particular focus on groups in society who are likely to be at greater risk. Refugee communities have a higher risk of mental health problems and higher rates of unemployment and as such, the importance of relocation programs is commensurate with the opportunity and risk they present. Governments, communities and service providers all need to acknowledge the potential benefits refugee relocation programs may bring as well as recognising that the consequences of failure can be ominous for all concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia the policy balance has shifted away from institutional forms of health and aged care towards supporting people in their own homes. This change presupposes a significant and growing supply of informal caring labour. A large proportion of informal carers (40-60 per cent) currently combine paid employment with their caring responsibilities. Using the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, the paper examines the effect of caring on employment, hours worked and earnings. The analysis shows that working age carers experience disadvantage. Carers are more likely than non-carers to reduce their hours of work or exit from the labour force, and earn lower levels of income. In planning for an ageing population, policies will need to address these negative effects and privatised costs of caring if the supply of informal care is to be sustained in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee Muslim women face a number of formidable obstacles in the resettlement process within Australia. As Muslims, they are a religious minority that has come under considerable racial attack in recent years in the wake of international terrorism. As refugees, they are struggling to put past traumas behind them and find ‘security’ in a strange land with different customs. As women, they are trying to find a voice for themselves amidst ethnic traditions that limit their range of expression and an Australian society that aspires to, but has not yet achieved, equality for women. Our qualitative study, upon which this paper is based, explored resettlement issues of Muslim refugee women during their first five years of arrival in Perth, Australia. It is based on focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 80 Muslim refugee women: 35 Iraqi, 34 Sudanese and 11 Afghan. Our study re-affirms that well-documented issues of resettlement continue to be poor English language competency, securing employment and accommodation and gender-specific problems. In addition, however, our study highlights a new and emerging issue, which is that of personal, psychological and cultural insecurity, heightened by the current political climate and exacerbated by their religious background. This leads to problematic ‘intersections’ with an Australian society that is far more complex and more difficult to cope with than is portrayed in popular discourse and political rhetoric of the easy-going ‘lucky country’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate collapses in Australia have provided stark evidence that employees do not always secure their employment entitlements, despite having a legal right to do so. There has been an implicit assumption in the Australian industrial relations system that employer evasion of employee entitlements is rare. However our detailed examination of enforcement within the Australian federal industrial relations system shows, for the first time, that despite awards, industrial agreements, union presence and an official enforcement agency, correct payment of entitlements has always been problematic. This paper examines inspection strategy between 1904 and 1995 and makes two points. The first is that changes in strategy have reduced the probability of detection. The second is that shifts towards individual contracts, lower union density, and increased precarious employment have decreased the likelihood of employees' ability to recover monies owed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops measures of job creation and job destruction (JC&D) based on the methodology initially developed by Davis and Haltiwanger (1990) and using industry employment data from the ABS Survey of Employment and Earnings (SEE), which is available on a quarterly basis between August 1983 and December 2001. It specifically examines the interaction of part-time and full-time employment with JC&D processes over the business cycle. Econometric analysis has been conducted to determine the time series properties of cyclical sensitivity and asymmetry.These findings are considered in the context of the likely consequences of the Howard government's Work Choices legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of disability employment policy in assisting people with psychiatric disability to find, or return to, paid work. We argue that the poor employment outcomes from current programs establish the need for a paradigmatic shift in the form of a state-provided Job Guarantee (JG) for people with psychiatric disability. In the absence of measures to generate suitable jobs, forthcoming changes to the eligibility criteria for Disability Support Pension will create risks rather than opportunities. Under the JG, the Federal Government would maintain a 'buffer stock' of minimum wage, public sector jobs to provide secure paid employment for this highly disadvantaged group. The role of the state in this alternative model is two fold. First, the state must provide the quantum of JG jobs required. Second, the state must ensure the design of jobs is flexible enough to meet the heterogeneous and variable support needs of workers. This will require effective integration of the JG scheme with mental health, rehabilitation and employment support services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical social changes in household formation over the past three decades have given rise to the single parent family. In spite of the level of public assistance, which is among the most generous in the OECD, research has shown that single parents (usually mothers) are among the most impoverished members of society. Recent legislation is moving toward mandating single parents off public assistance and into paid work in order for them to achieve more sustainable futures. In this paper we argue that this strategy is unlikely to succeed unless the particular needs of single parents are understood and addressed within a broader debate concerning women, care, and paid work. Family-friendly workplace practices, more extensive publicly funded childcare, and better opportunities for lifelong learning are some of the changes that are urgently needed to assist not only single parents but all who try to combine the dual roles of working and caring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of the New Zealand Poverty Measurement Project's analysis of the effects of the 1990s social reforms in New Zealand on the incidence and severity of poverty, and assesses the impact of the social and economic policies introduced by the Iabour-led coalition governments since 1999: New Zealand superannuation, income-related rents on state houses, active labour market policies for an employment-rich economy, the Primary Health Care Strategy and the planned income support policy to reduce child poverty. Superannuation is assessed as both adequate and sustainable, rents for state houses are found to he affordable, and CDP growth and employment have increased incrementally as unemployment and benefit numbers have decreased. The Primary Health Care Strategy is an innovative initiative that will increase affordable access to general practitioners, but it and the proposed child assistance initiatives arc too new to be adequately assessed. Of the challenges that remain, policy priorities should centre on housing alternatives, including home ownership for low-income households not in state houses; income support for poor households, particularly those with children; and multi-sector development of education and training aimed at lifting economic and social capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A proportion of the annual migrant intake now comprises persons accepted under the Refugee and Speck:! Humanitarian Program entry categories, for reasons oilier than the direct contribution their skills can make to economic growth. This paper examines the labour market experience of Cambodians, and considers the policy implications for resettlement services for refugees. Cambodians experience high rates of unemployment, and have low levels of English language proficiency, low levels of educational attainment, and few possess post-school qualifications. Reluctance to develop settlement services for refugees, to make special provisions for access within existing services, or even to ensure equitable access to existing services has contributed to the long term economic dependency of a sizeable proportion of this group. It is recommended that they be given greater access to basic, advanced and job related English language tuition. They, and other refugees with similar disadvantages also require special access to job search skills programs, vocational training, and wage subsidy and special employment programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores differences between men and women in levels of work satisfaction, employing data from the Australian component of the International Project on Class Structure and Class Consciousness. While women tend to be concentrated in low-status, low-paid positions, that is the secondary labour market, the data suggest that, in general, they are more satisfied with paid employment than men. Employment constraints are found to be a key factor in the observed differences in levels of work satisfaction. For both groups, however, it is clear that work satisfaction derives primarily from work-related factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia recently enacted welfare-to-work reforms for sole parents, the partially disabled and the long-term unemployed. At the same time, it enacted labour law reforms which dismantled labour law award protections in favour of 'individual bargaining'. This paper argues that the combined effect of these reforms not only brings about closer integration between social security and labour law, but also increases the 'disciplinary' controls over the lives of welfare clients, while also degrading the conditions of the most vulnerable welfare clients, whether they are in work (on reduced employment conditions) or on welfare (on less generous benefits). Keywords: Welfare reform, activation, welfare-to-work, breaching, A. Introduction The 2005 Federal Budget heralded a major Government investment in 'welfare-to-work' reforms first canvassed in the 'McClure Report' of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform (McClure, 2000). Among [...]

Households provide their members with both financial support and caring services. In sole parent households, the functions of earning money and caring for children fall to one individual. Current government policy favours work force participation as the solution to the higher poverty rates in lone parent families, but this may have a mirror effect on their ability to provide care. There is a great deal of research into the financial impacts of sole motherhood, but very little into the amount of time that sole parents' devote to care of their children, and what this means for their total (paid and unpaid) work commitments. In this paper I address this research gap. I analyse the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 1997 (over 4000 randomly selected households), to compare sole and couple parents' overall time commitments to paid and unpaid work and to investigate whether time spent with children in lone parent and couple-headed families differs in type or quantity., 1. Introduction Households provide both financial support and caring services to their members. How to balance market work and care is a challenging issue for most contemporary, families, but it [...]

This paper(1) argues that the JET Scheme, a jobs, education and training scheme for sole parent pensioners, is limited and insufficient to its tasks of preparing sole parents for entry [...]

The Welfare-to-work policy, implemented in July 2006 by the Federal Government, imposed a new work and activity obligation on people applying for the Disability Support Pension. This requirement not only created a new obligation for people with disability but also for employment consultants working in nonprofit Disability Employment Network organisations to monitor the conduct of this new cohort on behalf of Centrelink. For many employment consultants traditionally drawn to the nonprofit disability sector for altruistic reasons, this has created an ethical dilemma between their duty to their employer, and acting in the best interests of their clients. Drawing on aspects of ethical theory we find that, although most employment consultants justify their actions in terms of duty to the organisation, some find themselves in an ethical dilemma of 'who to serve' when the interests of the organisation and the welfare of the client are mismatched. Key Words: Welfare-to-work; Nonprofit; Disability, Introduction In July 2006 the then Federal Government in Australia, led by John Howard, implemented welfare-to-work policies for several social security cohorts, including people with disability. The opportunity to extend [...]

As in other western industrialised countries the structural ageing of the Australian population has significant labour market implications. Government has responded with a range of policies to persuade older workers to abandon early retirement and/or remain in the workforce past traditional retirement ages. But whether this generation of workers will be prepared to change their retirement plans in response to policy encouragement, and whether current policy measures will translate into significant numbers of older workers extending their labour force participation is uncertain. Using the Australian Survey of Retirement Attitudes and Motivations (ASRAM) a recently completed, nationally representative survey of Australian workers aged 40-59 years we find that while the Government message about working longer is getting through, older workers are relatively unresponsive to current policy measures. Other policies, especially policies outside the financial realm, are needed to maximise the number of older Australians in the labour force. Keywords: Retirement, Older workers, Labour market, Introduction As in other western industrialised countries the proportion of older Australians is rising. While structural ageing is not yet as pronounced as it is in Europe, this changing demographic [...]

Current discussions of welfare reform are influenced by various kinds of talk about `participation '. Three are predominant in Australia: talk of self-sufficiency, paying your dues, and team effort. All imply a local/associational/voluntary model of society which deflects attention from broader structural and economic factors. This prevailing treatment of `participation' is heavily biased, ignoring alternative interpretations such as the older tradition that emphasises rights. The general discourse it underwrites is at best ineffective and quite likely dangerous., This is the argument used by every dictator, inquisitor, and bully who seeks some moral, or even aesthetic, justification for his conduct. I must do for men (or with them) [...]

An examination of the discussion surrounding aspects of job security in Australia in light of the apparently conflicting evidence and interpretations of the prevailing trends. Notions of job security need to move beyond the narrow perception of a link to actual or expected job duration. After a discussion of why job security is of policy interest, the various definitions and interpretations of the concept are reviewed. This leads to a consideration of whether the available evidence indicates job security is increasing or decreasing in Australia., Introduction Job security has become an important issue in OECD countries in recent years. In Australia the media regularly publish polls indicating that many Australian workers are insecure in their [...]

Defences of the youth wage constitute a form of discrimination against young people with significant implications for income poverty among 16-24 year olds in Australia. In a manner comparable to the historic denigration of women and Indigenous Australians, arguments against the equal value of youth work rest on normative and empirical assumptions that are entirely contestable. Ultimately, they embody an animus against a section of the population that deprives them of their fundamental civic status., The full-time youth labour market that existed until the mid-1970s has now disappeared, producing a significant decline in the average income of young people and a growing gap in wages [...]

It has come to be almost cliche to say that young people are among those Australians most deeply affected by the restructuring and globalisation which have reshaped the Australian experience [...]