The initial prosperity of the 21st century’s first decade was accompanied in Australia by a skills shortage. Despite a relatively brief hiatus created by the ‘global financial crisis’, significant skills shortages have re-emerged. Drawing on multi-scalar insights into the construction industry in Australia and worldwide, and qualitative research in Australia, this article highlights the geographically constituted nature of the construction industry and the contradictory interplay of local labour force formation with increased recourse to the global labour market to meet workforce needs. More broadly, the article demonstrates how an appreciation of the geographical nature of an industry can yield new insights into work and employment.
This article examines the roles and influence of sh op stewards under workplace partnership regimes in five case study firms in the Republic of Ireland. Much of the extant literature tends to focus on the outcomes of partnership in term s of the gains or losses to either management and/or union. Consequently, the capacity for the 'processes' of social partnership to shape the behaviour and role of workplace union representatives has often been neglected in much of the literature. The findings indicate that while union representatives view partnership in a broadly positive light, there remain problem s as to the longevity of partnership owing to management control and a di sconnection between national (g overnment) and local (workplace) support mechanisms for partnership. The article concludes that social partnership is a process that remains anchored in an antagonistic employment relationship that is influenced by context, union membership strength and management choice.
Regional labour councils have been involved in building labour–community coalitions. The case study of the South Coast Labour Council demonstrates that a regional labour council can engage in a broader make–up of lobbying partners than is generally recognised in the literature, which includes labour–community coalitions that are not geographically, politically or socially close. The South Coast Labour Council did not focus on employer opposition, as is usually the case with building labour–community coalitions, but rather, it focused on lobbying farmers to increase pressure on government officials for the siting of a grain terminal in Port Kembla, near Wollongong in the Illawarra region of NSW. It pursued broader aims of labour–community coalitions to include local employment generation.
The article examines how a regional peak union council is structured in its response to regional restructuring. It focuses on an Australian regional peak union council, the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC), which pursued a goal of local employment generation from 1983 to 1996. The SCLC is based in the Illawarra region on the east coast, south of Sydney in the state of New South Wales. Its operations are centred on the city of Wollongong and Port Kembla, where the region’s economic activity is focused. The region had experienced unemployment greater than the state and national averages through the 1980s and 1990s. The article demonstrates how the SCLC’s structure allows it to perform its role as an agent of exchange with governments and employers, and thereby attempts to shape the political and industrial environment in which it resides. At the same time, the environment, in terms of government and employer policy and regional need, shapes the SCLC with it becoming involved with local employment generation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.