I address the goal of work time reduction from two distinct angles. Firstly, I review some old ideas (linked to the writings of Marx, J.S. Mill and Keynes) that imagine a better society where constant work is replaced with abundant leisure. I show how these ideas offer different views on the barriers preventing work time reduction and on the mechanisms required to achieve it. Secondly, I consider new possibilities for reducing working time in the future. There is now renewed confidence that work time reduction can and will be achieved: this confidence reflects predictions of work automation driven by new technology and the increase in business-led trials of a four-day working week. I argue that achieving work time reduction will face obstacles (it will not occur smoothly via technological progress, nor will it be achieved spontaneously by business-led reform), but that its pursuit remains vital and essential in advancing human well-being. Old ideas, therefore, can still fire our imaginations. At the same time, they remind us of the barriers to reform and the battle still to be fought in achieving a future where we all work less. Winning this battle will ultimately require us to strive for futures beyond capitalism.
Academic research plays a vital role in helping to understand and address urgent global social problems. Addressing real-world problems relating to work and employment lie at the heart of industrial relations research. In a time where academics are increasingly encouraged to demonstrate positive societal impact from research, there is growing scholarly debate around the opportunities, limitations and challenges of researching for societal impact. This article interrogates the opportunities and complexities of undertaking research for societal impact. It argues that while a shift in perspective and practice is needed to truly advance research with social relevance, challenges remain in defining, evidencing and creating space and resources for such research.
This research is an integrative review of the work-life balance (WLB) construct, mapping its early evolution from the periods of pre-industrialisation, to the post-COVID-19 period. We progressed with a systematic literature search over the Scopus database for document identification, followed by a thematic review to trace WLB from the pre-industrial era to the context of a hybrid work environment. The documents are identified based on Contribution-Based Inclusion Criterion (CBIC) focusing on theoretical advances and measurement innovations in WLB. The review then focused on theoretical antecedents of the WLB, namely role theory, role accumulation, work-family conflict and enrichment and linked it with the explicit rise of the term 'WLB' in the late twentieth century. Further, we critically analysed the theoretical and conceptual muddles and jingle-jangle fallacies in WLB research and highlighted the need for conceptual clarity. The review clarifies that work-family balance (WFB) is a subset of WLB, yet the empirical validation of the theoretical distinction is still mislaid. The implication of the flexible and hybrid work design, gender neutral policies, non-conventional work and its impact on intersectional inequalities, organisational culture, and the refinement of WLB theory and metrics is the agenda for future work.
Australia's deindustrialisation has produced a structural trap, locking in dependence on resources in decline due to decarbonisation. Simultaneously, lack of industrial capacity has impeded Australia's net-zero transition, despite vast renewable power and minerals immensely valuable to the transitioning global economy. Coupling decarbonisation with reindustrialisation, the Albanese government's Future Made in Australia (FMA) seeks to accelerate the net-zero transition while overcoming the nation's lock-in to declining forms of resource extraction. This paper critically appraises FMA as an industrial policy response to the energy transition. Contrasting with much domestic criticism of it, FMA is largely framed by neoliberal assumptions and is at the weaker end of contemporary industrial policies. As constituted, FMA falls short of its own objectives, in scale and structure. Nevertheless, the FMA can become a more expansive industrial strategy, geared to an explicit generational mission of reindustrialisation to drive decarbonisation, increased onshore value adding and national sovereign capabilities. This expanded FMA remit requires commitment to sustained institutional processes and the development of presently lacking state capacities.
The study examines how employee voice is exercised during a university restructuring. The investigation focuses on the consultation process outlined in the enterprise agreement (EA) and the employer's obligation to consult under Australian legislation. The research centres on a regional university in Australia that consolidated its five faculties into three colleges in 2020. This consolidation led to job losses and impacted both professional and academic staff. Using a single instrumental case study, insights and first-hand accounts of employee voice during the restructuring process were gathered through semi-structured interviews. The study highlights that university restructuring has been ongoing, reflecting changes in government funding models and the increasing market orientation of the sector. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to address the research questions and interpret the data. The study indicates that the case study university embodies a neoliberal model where cost reduction and surplus generation drive restructuring. Despite the formal recognition of the employer's duty to consult and the processes outlined in the EA, the right to consultation is often circumvented, rendering it ineffective. Employees neither share decision-making nor influence the outcomes. These findings suggest that employee voice is neither effective nor meaningful during university restructuring.
This paper develops a spatially-sensitive approach to understanding the challenges of youth labour markets in the EU South during recent successive economic crises. Drawing upon Geographical Political Economy and Evolutionary Economic Geography, it develops a framework through which to evaluate the operation of the Youth Guarantee, a programme introduced in 2013 that aims to encourage resiliency in youth labour markets by ensuring that all young people have access to good jobs. To our knowledge, the paper is the first to analyse the YG using critical spatial theory. Our goal, then, is i) to provide an in-depth discussion of the implications of workfare policies for youth in the EU South (and perhaps beyond) and ii) to develop a better understanding of the spatial complexity of the relationship between workfare and resilience in youth labour markets. The paper argues that the spread of workfare principles into youth labour markets creates a 'symbiotic' relationship with precarity in which each feeds off the other. In sum, we argue that the relationship between regional resilience and workfare for youth is highly geographically- and temporally-sensitive and that we must take this into consideration when evaluating the potential for the YG's success.
This study aimed to compare suicide mortality among Australian male construction workers relative to other employed males using 21 years of data from the National Coronial Information System. We calculated age-standardised suicide rates for construction workers and other workers, and examined trends for age groups. Joinpoint regression methods were used to assess trends in rates and calculate annual average percentage change (AAPC). The pooled age-standardised suicide rate for construction workers was 25.7 per 100,000, compared to 14.3 per 100,000 for other employed males. The suicide rate among construction workers declined across 21 years, with an AAPC of -2.29 (95% CI -3.09, -1.49). A smaller decline was observed in other workers (AAPC -0.79, 95% CI -1.21, -0.37), and a pair-wise comparison showed that suicide rates were declining in construction workers 1.5% faster than in other workers (absolute difference in AAPC: 1.5, 95% CI 0.65, 2.34). The difference between construction and other workers was greatest among younger workers aged under 45 years. While male construction workers remain at high risk of suicide in Australia, the disparity between construction and other workers has diminished across 21 years. Construction workers aged under 45 years appear to drive disparities and should be a focus of suicide prevention efforts.
Nurse turnover is a central driver of the growing care deficits that characterise contemporary capitalism. In Sweden, despite policy efforts to improve retention, nurse shortages persist - destabilising care provision and intensifying workplace strain. This article explores how turnover and employer responses in the Swedish healthcare sector reflect the contradictory dynamics of market culture. Drawing on document and media analysis, and informed by feminist-Polanyian theories of care and Hirschman's exit-voice framework, the study shows that nurses respond to deteriorating conditions through exit, while regional authorities adopt market-based strategies selectively. Market logics are embraced when they enhance managerial control but resisted when nurses act as autonomous market agents. This ambivalence reveals deeper tensions in the governance of care work under neoliberalism. The article contributes to scholarship on the care crisis, marketisation, and the transformation of professional subjectivities in human service organisations.
The self-employed have been an important part of the New Zealand labour force and economy over the past century, accounting for 15-20% of the employed labour force, with counter-cyclical swings in the ratio. There has been a dramatic change in their industry distribution, from a pattern dominated by agriculture, trade and the professions to one in which finance and business services are more dominant, though agriculture remains important. This paper is part of a wider project to estimate economic rents in New Zealand, but weak data about the self-employed, and conceptual issues, make it difficult to produce valid estimates for them. Our best estimate is that up to 1980 there were positive rents but that since then the self-employed have been, on average, failing to cover their costs of labour and capital. However, dramatically increased income inequality within the self-employed has seen a separation between a long-established high-income stratum and a fast-growing low-income precariat. This paper presents an extensive set of statistical tables covering the years 1939-2023.
Declining union density in the advanced capitalist world has been largely attributed to macro- and union factors. However, widespread increases in strike activity support pre-pandemic observations of its potential. This paper reviews scholarship on macro-, meso- and micro-influences on strike activity before focusing on the micro-factors emphasised in studies concerned with workers' propensity to strike. Statistical analyses of survey data from New Zealand assess which factors, including worker autonomy, significantly link to workers' past and likely strike engagement and whether the Covid-19 context influenced such engagement. Findings are discussed with regard to New Zealand's labour force diversity (including its gender dimension) and union renewal and will thus resonate elsewhere.
We examine the relationship between occupational hazards, health expenditure, and livelihood vulnerability among slum dwellers in West Bengal, India. Using primary survey data collected from 560 primary earners residing in slum settlements across four industrialised districts of the state, we analyse both industrial and non-industrial occupations. Catastrophic health expenditure is measured using the standard capacity-to-pay approach, and its determinants are estimated through a binary logistic regression model. We classify the determinants of catastrophic health expenditure into individual factors (income, addiction, and caste), human capital (education and work experience), occupational factors (industry type, job tenure, and risk exposure), illness-related factors (nature of illness, injury types), and locational factors. Our findings reveal a persistent paradox: although the industrial workers earn higher incomes from hazardous jobs, this often leads to substantial out-of-pocket health expenditures, resulting in financial catastrophe for many. Higher education and longer work experience significantly increase the likelihood of incurring catastrophic expenditures. Illness severity and workplace injuries emerge as the strongest predictors, while pronounced district-level disparities persist, with workers in Cooch Behar facing markedly higher financial risk. We find that occupational exposure, combined with inadequate health protection mechanisms, sustains financial vulnerability among slum-dwelling workers, even when industrial employment increases income.
A key distinctive characteristic of Industry 5.0 with respect to Industry 4.0 is the redefinition of the use of robots in industry, where technologies like cobots enable a collaborative use in the workplace. The robot goes from being an isolated tool in the production process to a kind of workmate. This is known as human-robot collaboration (HRC). This paper analyzes the acceptance of this type of technology with a sample of 126 industrial workers, adopting as a theoretical ground the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Specifically, the attitude towards HRC is explained, directly or indirectly, through perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEoU), subjective norm (SN), positive emotions (PE), and anxiety emotions (AE). Using the proposed analytical framework, the model is adjusted with variance-based Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), and necessary conditions for acceptance are identified using Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA). With PLS-SEM, we observe that the positive relationships of PU (directly), PEoU, and SN (partially mediated by PU) and PE and AE (fully mediated by PEoU) are significant in explaining the attitude. With NCA, we observe that only PU and PE and AE are necessary conditions with an empirically relevant effect size for the existence of acceptance.
The rapid expansion of platform-based gig work in ASEAN member states has exposed persistent regulatory gaps, including worker misclassification and fragmented labour protection. While the EU Platform Work Directive introduces a presumption of employment and enhanced algorithmic transparency, most ASEAN platform workers continue to be classified as independent contractors with limited social and labour safeguards. Drawing on regulatory governance theory, this study proposes a non-binding soft law framework, the 'ASEAN Platform Gig Work Directive,' based on doctrinal and comparative analysis of the EU approach. Rather than treating the EU Directive as a ready-made benchmark, the study conceptualises it as a contested regulatory experiment and adapts its lessons to ASEAN's institutional diversity. It argues that soft law can function as an intermediate regulatory instrument to reduce fragmentation, enhance policy coordination, and support minimum labour protections in ASEAN's evolving digital labour environment.
The 2006 Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and UN Sustainable Development Goal 8 (Decent work and economic growth) make it imperative that people living with a disability achieve successful employment outcomes. What are the critical actions required of employers to achieve this outcome? We adopted a mixed methods approach to identify what employers could and should do to facilitate employment success for employees with disabilities. This included a survey of 392 Australians with disabilities who were employed in mainstream employment, and 47 multi-stakeholder interviews with people with disabilities, disability employment service providers and employers. The role of employers in creating a positive corporate culture and climate emerged as the most important enabler for achieving successful employment outcomes for people with disabilities.
Gender inequalities in careers often unfold gradually. Whilst individual events are important, longitudinal studies of careers offer insight into how gendered advantage and disadvantage can accumulate and compound over time. This article describes a novel multilevel conceptual framework for understanding gender in architectural career trajectories. It integrates three conceptual theories: gendered life course perspective, feminist institutionalism and concepts of cumulative advantage and disadvantage. Applying this framework to a longitudinal case study of the Australian architecture profession illuminates the complex interplay of enduring informal norms, historical legacies, and entrenched power dynamics operating within a large architecture firm. It highlights how organisational practices and gendered actors shape work in ways that create lasting gendered effects, limiting women's career progression while reinforcing men's advantage. Taken together, these findings reveal that gender inequality in architecture is not episodic but cumulative, driven by persistent informal norms and allocation practices that create path-dependent trajectories. Despite policy reforms, these deeply embedded rules reproduce male advantage and constrain women's progression across the life course, demonstrating the resilience of gendered institutions over time.
