Journal of Industrial Relations

The rapid development of digital platform businesses has facilitated the expansion of gig work in China and elsewhere in recent years. Now that IT-powered platforms have been used in part to free the capital from taking employer responsibilities, the capital’s toolkit for labor control has been significantly limited. Drawing on qualitative field research supplemented by quantitative data on Uber in China, this article provides a novel empirical account of the labor control of digital platforms, and more importantly, their effects on different types of workers. The authors have identified three crucial strategies that Uber has devised to control its drivers’ labor process: an incentive pay system, a customer evaluation system, and flexible work arrangements. These strategies will, however, demonstrate significant effects on drivers’ working hours and income only when we consider the different motivations of Uber drivers. Specifically, the working efforts of those who drive for Uber as their only source of income are responsive to incentive pay schemes and a platform’s evaluation system, but are not as responsive to work flexibility. The exact opposite is the case for drivers who have other jobs and sources of income.

Qingjun Wu

Hao Zhang

Zhen Li

Kai Liu

Labor control in the gig economy: Evidence from Uber in China

零工经济中的劳动控制：来自中国优步的证据

Devolved governance, school autonomy and marketisation impact the employment practices of schools and the working conditions of teachers. However, the employment-related effects on school services staff are under-researched. This study draws on data from interviews with staff at one public high school to analyse school services staff experience of school autonomy and the employment practices of principals in the context of competitive education markets. This case study illustrates how a principal's management of employment and labour relations in a school experiencing declining enrolments and reduced resources impacted the labour and working conditions of school services staff. We argue that the principal applies a calculation of utility-maximisation and entrepreneurship to the non-teaching staff's employment and carelessness to their employment conditions, thereby producing flexploitation that relies on the unpaid time and emotional commitment of their staff to do the best for the students. We recommend systemwide policies and practices that effectively train and support principals to protect the employment rights of all school staff should accompany decentralisation policies where responsibility for staffing is devolved to principals.

Brad Gobby

Jill Blackmore

Scott Eacott

Amanda Keddie

Katrina MacDonald

Richard Niesche

Jane Wilkinson

Principals and the careless erosion of employment standards in the context of school autonomy and marketisation: a case study of school support staff

校长与学校自主和市场化背景下的就业标准疏忽侵蚀：学校支持人员的案例研究

Recent changes in industrial relations policies represent a break with the Australian experiment with market citizenship at work. At the Federal level, they involve the adaptive reuse of legacies that have, in recent decades, been regarded as secondary to the system (e.g. awards and industrial tribunals) to renovate the foundations of labour law. Innovations in wages policy are helping repair the foundational economy (i.e. sectors providing the infrastructure of everyday life including education, health and social care). These changes are being driven by new social coalitions involving unions from the new heartlands, Non-Governmental Organizations and researchers launching initiatives that are supported by Australian Labor Party governments and often buttressed by large-scale commissions of inquiry. Their key achievement has been delivering novel coordination of wages policies with education, social and fiscal policies. In this way, the new coalitions are creating a new politics of solidarity.

John Buchanan

Troy Henderson

James A Gillespie

Jo-An Occhipinti

Recovering from the market citizenship experiment: Recent developments in Australian industrial relations policies

从市场公民身份实验中恢复：澳大利亚劳资关系政策的最新发展

Amendments to the Fair Work Act now allow workers in Australia a right to disconnect. The implementation of this right precipitated a polarised public debate that was not consistently evidence-based, encompassing the often-contradictory perspectives of unions, employers, business lobbies and politicians. This study offers a more nuanced and evidence-based understanding of the right to disconnect, its benefits and challenges and the possible impact on Australian employment practices and relations. It provides an international comparative analysis; it explores the literature on related topics such as work–life balance, occupational stress, management practices and productivity; and it proposes a model of the consequences of technology-enabled flexible work. The comparative analysis and literature review are supplemented with themes identified in Australian media coverage through a Leximancer analysis. The findings discuss the advantages and limitations of diverse top-down legislative or self-regulatory pathways experienced overseas by early adopters. While the right to disconnect can improve work–life balance, health and well-being and productivity, its implementation requires careful consideration of industry-specific contexts, clear policies and cultural shifts in workplaces to mitigate the risks associated with hyperconnectivity. These insights are useful for Australia as it enters the implementation phase of the right to disconnect.

Emmanuel Josserand

Martijn Boersma

Australia's right to disconnect from work: Beyond rhetoric and towards implementation

澳大利亚的断连权：从言辞走向实施

The election of Labor Governments nationally and in New South Wales (NSW), after nine and twelve years in opposition respectively, have seen the rapid implementation of ‘interesting and critical developments in Australian industrial relations’ in both spheres. Leaving aside the usual hyperbole displayed by both supporters and opponents of industrial relations law reform generally, the changes that have been made by each of the Albanese and Minns Labor Governments have been, on any measure, highly significant. The rapid pace at which those changes have been made is also noteworthy. At the Federal level, they arguably constitute more significant changes to the industrial relations framework than the original enactment of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (‘FWA’). The reforms in NSW are, so far, more in the nature of a restoration of the model in the Industrial Relations Act 1996 (NSW) (‘the IRA’).

Hon. Adam Searle

The pace of change - the breakneck speed of industrial relations law reform since 2022

变革的步伐——2022年以来工业关系法律改革的迅猛速度

Using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper analyses the wage gap between the public and private sectors in Australia from 2001 to 2022. The analysis is conducted at both the national and state levels. We found that, since 2014, the public-sector wage premium (nationally) has increased for women but decreased for men, with women's outcomes driving current trends. Additionally, the public-sector wage premium varies significantly across states, indicating that state-level wage-setting forces are more influential than national ones. Our trend analysis reveals that the premium is neither consistently procyclical nor countercyclical. Furthermore, quantile analysis shows that the premium fluctuates across the wage distribution, though not in a uniform pattern over time.

Elisa Birch

Alison Preston

Public–private sector wage gaps in Australia: Extent, trends and gender

澳大利亚公共部门与私营部门的工资差距：程度、趋势与性别因素

In coordinated market economies, nonstandard forms of employment are more common among women than among men. However, the existing scholarly literature devoted little attention to the examination of gendered employment patterns by skill level in newly emerged coordinated economies. This article employs a gender-based approach within the Varieties of Capitalism framework to analyse the effects of gender segmentation across diverse occupational skill levels in South Korea. The findings, derived from workers’ surveys and workplace interviews, indicate that the features of gender segmentation in employment outcomes vary according to skill level. Although the feminist critique on dualisation scenarios is supported, it is evident that the strict employment protection afforded by standard employment contracts does not benefit women uniformly. This discrepancy arises from employers' gendered logic, which is embedded in the country-specific gendered institutional structure of the production regime. The South Korean experience problematises the skill-based approach to dualisation scenarios, underscoring notable divergences from the evidence observed in mature coordinated market economies.

Francis K. Yoon

Is standard employment contract good for all? The gendered institutional logic of employment in South Korea

标准雇佣合同对所有人都好吗？韩国雇佣中的性别制度逻辑

Lucy Taksa

Amanda Pyman

Editorial

社论

Addressing issues of gender inequality is ongoing and important in the context of broader employment relations at work. Scholars within the Australian industrial relations community work toward the continuance of research and analysis that highlights the perennial issues impacting women in the labor market, to address historical and systemic barriers and identified inequalities. This article provides a review of the major developments and activities undertaken toward addressing gender inequality based on recent changes to industrial relations legislation. The article focuses on the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 and the amendments made via the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) 2023 Bill. The Fair Work Act 2009 amendments via the Secure Jobs, Better Pay 2022 and Closing Loopholes 2023 are also discussed. This article reviews these recent changes in answer to this special issue's call for a review of the key issues and developments made toward addressing gender inequality, useful for both academics and practitioners of employment relations.

Susan Ressia

Addressing gender inequality issues in Australia: An annual review of developments

解决澳大利亚性别不平等问题：发展年度回顾

Abbreviation	J. Ind. Relat.
Journal Impact	2.16
Quartiles(Global)	INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS & LABOR(Q2)

ISSN	0022-1856, 1472-9296
h-index	41

Publication Information	Publisher: SAGE Publications Inc.，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 1959，Proportion of original research papers: 91.18%，Self Citation Rate:9.10%， Gold OA Rate: 33.67%

Journal of Industrial Relations

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Share Submission Experience

Labor control in the gig economy: Evidence from Uber in China

Principals and the careless erosion of employment standards in the context of school autonomy and marketisation: a case study of school support staff

Recovering from the market citizenship experiment: Recent developments in Australian industrial relations policies

Australia's right to disconnect from work: Beyond rhetoric and towards implementation

The pace of change - the breakneck speed of industrial relations law reform since 2022

Principals and the careless erosion of employment standards in the context of school autonomy and marketisation: a case study of school support staff

Public–private sector wage gaps in Australia: Extent, trends and gender

Is standard employment contract good for all? The gendered institutional logic of employment in South Korea

Editorial

Addressing gender inequality issues in Australia: An annual review of developments