Despite decades of Equal Opportunity legislation, gender inequality persists in Australian universities. This is largely due to the shaping of universities by new market principles, discourses of individualisation that render the asymmetry of gender relations invisible, and privileging masculine epistemologies. Concurrently, industrial relations…

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

Intermediaries--also referred to as bridge builders, boundary spanners, conveners, and other names--fill the critical role of connecting all the parties in the system to empower people with the skills required in the labor force. Those parties generally include employers, educators, workers, and prospective workers. Within these categories may…

This paper first examines the current literacy and numeracy "crisis" in Australian workplaces where loss of productivity, lack of take-up in training, and skills shortages are being blamed on workers' lack of literacy and numeracy skills. Literacy and numeracy in workplaces are more complex and require alternative understandings of…

This paper uses data from interviews with representatives of national and state organisations that have a policy interest in student-working in Australia. The interviewees included representatives from employer bodies and trade unions as well as government organisations. The data are used to discuss these stakeholders' perceptions of the main…

Australian trade unions are at a pivotal moment. In 2007-2008, a review of the training and education programs of the Education and Campaign Centre (ECC), the education arm of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), was conducted through a series of interviews with leaders of twenty-five unions. The review found that Australian unions do…

The principle of decent work was first espoused in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since 1999 the International Labour Organisation has operated according to a Decent Work Agenda and in recent times the movement towards the provision of decent work as a means of improving the quality of life has gathered momentum. Decent work is…

This article, using unbalanced panel data on 16 affluent OECD countries, tests the effects of diverse aspects of globalization and deindustrialization on unionization trends. In contrast to the recent studies focusing on the conditional role of labor market institutions, this study underlines the role of two structural factors in transforming…

Involvement of employees and unions in workplace decision-making has a long history in Australian industrial relations. The mechanism for employee involvement in workplace change was originally set out in the Termination Change and Redundancy (TCR) clause in Australian awards in 1984. It continues to operate under Enterprise Bargaining Agreements…

Transcripts of interviews with trade union trainers in Australia identified contradictory discourses: discourse of struggle and discourse on the economy. Some training activities focused on consensus building in workplace relations, but trainers' informal theories acknowledged the power imbalance between the working class and management. (SK)

In the late 1980s a new concept entered the educational lexicon in Australia--"award restructuring," or paid training leave for teachers. However, by 1993 the term had disappeared from public view. What began as a new politics of work developed into a complex debate about governance and leadership in Australian education. This book…

Discusses the argument that Australian trade unions, because they are created by the state, are dependent on state for membership, authority, power, and the provision of industrial conditions. Subjects the explanation of the origins of the movement to empirical analysis and focuses on the key role ascribed to the actions of the early Industrial…

A Committee of Inquiry into Education and Training, established to investigate the provision of Australian educational facilities and services and the relationship between the labor market and the educational system, is discussed. The committee considered flexibility in education and training, apprenticeship, accessibility of education and…

The history of the recent development of worker education in Australia and New Zealand shows that, in just the past 15 years or so, very significant improvements have occurred in delivery of trade union education. To a very large degree these developments took place because of the existence of a close relationship between the union movement and…