Pay Equity Strategies: Notes from New Zealand and New South Wales

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

2011

This study begins with a brief theoretical discussion of the defining features of new public management (NPM) and its employment relations implications. This is followed by analyses of the managerial and union strategies through which change was effected, resisted and negotiated in Australia and New Zealand. The discussion contrasts the approaches to regulating employment relations that waxed and waned under a succession of Labor and Coalition governments in Australia and Labour and National governments in New Zealand. The conclusion is one of survival in both countries, both of elements of NPM and of public sector unionism.

Section: The International Journal Of Human Resource Management 2377mentioning

confidence: 99%

New public management and employment relations in the public services of Australia and New Zealand

O’Donnell

O’Brien

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

2011

“…Phillips and Taylor (:79) thus describe skill definitions as ‘saturated with sexual bias’, bearing ‘little relation to the actual amount of training or ability required …’ (see also Cockburn, ). With service jobs now the main employment source, particularly for women, some feminists argue for a new construction of skill (Gatta et al, ; Hall and Reed, ; Hampson and Junor, ). Others argue that the main issue is not skill but bad jobs (Horrell et al, ).…”

Section: Skill and Its Social Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stages of the Social Construction of Skill: Revisiting Debates over Service Skill Recognition

Hampson

2015

Sociology Compass

This article reprises debates over ‘the social construction of skill’ (SCS), in the context of the rise of a service economy, and a diminished capacity for collective worker protection of job quality. After exploring the changed conceptual terrain in which the concept of SCS is deployed, it puts the case for recognising under‐documented skills in service jobs. It argues that real (because based on learning) but hitherto uncodified skills are beginning to be mapped in a corpus of interpretative research. A fieldwork‐based conceptual framework is offered for more fully codifying these skills. Such codification may give employers a handle for increased behavioural control, but may also help workers gain recognition and reward for real skills. We identify ‘stages of social construction’: first, skills' ‘detection’ and naming in job‐analysis interviews and second, skills recognition in qualifications and job/person descriptions. Increased remuneration and/or work reorganisation through political–institutional processes, driven by the agency of unions and professional organisations, HR departments or even management itself, may follow. The politics of the concepts' development (or not) in academic and policy communities – another facet of the SCS – we eschew here.

“…Workers, however, may be able to claim skill through legal or industrial campaigns. The managerial tool of job evaluation has been used with some success to gain skill recognition in feminised jobs (Hall and Reed, 2007;Steinberg, 1990). In Australia, the industrial relations system, which allows collective skill assessments based on work value claims, is a potential pay equity vehicle.…”

Section: Insights From Labour Process Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such real practical expertise is often under-recognised and unrewarded (Gatta et al, 2007), and one reason for this is lack of a vocabulary to register certain tacit skills and the levels at which they are applied. Pay and employment equity are advanced only through political contestation, but an adequate skill vocabulary may be part of such contestation (Hall and Reed, 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Putting the process back in: rethinking service sector skill

Hampson

Work, Employment and Society

2010

Service skill definitions have been over-extended, by equating compliance with skill, and underdeveloped, by not recognising service jobs’ invisible social and organisational aspects. Existing approaches to determining service skill levels draw on occupational qualifications and capacity for labour market closure, on knowledge worker/ knowledgeable emotion worker dichotomies, and on the conceptual conflation of labour process deskilling, unskilled jobs and unskilled workers. The theoretical and empirical basis for a new framework identifying hitherto under-specified ‘work process skills’ is outlined. This framework allows recognition of the integrated use of awareness-shaping, relationship-shaping and coordination skills, at different levels of experience-based complexity, derived from reflexive learning and collective problem-solving in the workplace. Political struggles over the use of combinations and levels of these ‘skills of experience’ may result either in jobs designed to reduce autonomy, or in improved skill recognition and development, enhancing equity and career paths.