About
94
Publications
16,632
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,201
Citations
Citations since 2017
Additional affiliations
January 2014 - January 2015
Publications
Publications (94)
Chapter 3 contains a comparative review of pre-strike ballot requirements, describing the principal forms adopted around the world. It demonstrates that pre-strike ballot requirements can range from ‘light touch’ regulation specifying that union rules must contain provisions requiring the conduct of pre-strike ballots but attaching almost no conseq...
Chapter 5 examines the impact of the pre-strike ballot requirements on the capacity of trade unions to organize and take strike action. It argues that even though the legislative requirements for a pre-strike ballot appear to be neutral, they are not always neutral in practice. The analysis in the chapter demonstrates that, in practice, the combine...
The purpose of the research upon which this book is based was empirically to investigate whether the ballot requirements in the Fair Work Act do indeed impose a significant obstacle to the taking of industrial action, and whether those provisions are indeed impelled by a legitimate ‘democratic imperative’. The book starts from the proposition that...
Chapter 4 provides a detailed description and explanation of the Australian pre-strike ballot provisions, and includes the history and development of the provisions, and a detailed description of their operation in practice. The chapter describes how a pre-strike ballot application is made, the process that the industrial tribunal, Fair Work Commis...
Chapter 6 examines the ways in which pre-strike ballot requirements provide bargaining leverage to unions and, to a lesser extent, employers. The chapter’s analysis of internal union processes and bargaining dynamics suggests that the pre-strike ballot process can provide unions with some benefits, or advantages, in the enterprise bargaining proces...
The book is underpinned by the assumption that the right to strike to promote or to protect the individual’s economic and social interests is a universally recognized human right, either standing on its own, or as part of the principle of freedom of association. This is reflected in the fact that the right to strike is, directly or indirectly, affo...
Chapter 7 interrogates the central issue in the book — the extent to which pre-strike ballot requirements give effect to the democratic rights of individual workers and the public interest in ensuring that the exercise of strike action is based on democratic decision-making. It argues that pre-strike ballot requirements are imposed on trade unions...
This chapter examines the nature and purposes of strike action. It suggests that strikes are a means of protecting and promoting the social and economic interests of workers—especially in the context of collective bargaining. It provides an historical outline of the relationship between strikes and the law by tracing the transition from repression...
This concluding chapter considers how Australian pre-strike ballot requirements reflect the explicit (furthering industrial democracy) and implicit (inhibiting strike action) objectives that underpinned their introduction. After summarizing the practical operation and impact of the statutory requirements, the chapter describes stakeholder perceptio...
In 2016, the UK Parliament passed the Trade Union Act 2016 (TU Act 2016), which introduced new quorum and approval requirements for pre-strike ballots. In Australia, mandatory pre-strike ballots, including a quorum requirement, were first introduced in 2006. This article explains the key features of the Australian pre-strike ballot system and repor...
There has been considerable research and policy debate over the enforcement and decriminalization of occupational health and safety legislation, particularly regarding its capacity to deal with serious harm. Reference has been made to community attitudes to work fatalities, but the perspectives of those most directly affected, the bereaved families...
This Special Issue contains a selection of articles presented at a workshop, ‘Emerging Business Models and the Evolving Regulatory Response: Perspectives from Australia and Beyond’. This workshop brought together a group of scholars, policymakers and graduate students actively working on, or otherwise interested in, the broad themes of labour and e...
Australian labour law has been slow to address the serious effects of psychosocial issues, on workers, their families, and workplaces. To the extent that it has taken a preventive approach these issues, the focus has been on harassment and bullying at work. In the past decade or two, there have been three significant measures in Australian law aime...
Workplace relations in Australia, including requirements relating to the use of industrial action in the context of enterprise bargaining, are governed by the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act). Legally protected industrial action by employees and their bargaining representatives can lawfully be taken only in the context of, and is conditional upon,...
Ce numéro spécial de Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations présente des articles issus de recherches originales consacrées à des changements fondamentaux survenus dans le travail et les formes d’emploi, qui détériorent la santé et la sécurité des travailleuses et des travailleurs et qui creusent les inégalités face à la santé. Ce sont auta...
This special issue of Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations presents articles based on original research on fundamental changes to work and work arrangements that undermine workers’ health and safety, exacerbate health inequalities and pose major challenges to those who want to resist a 'race to the bottom' in working conditions and imagin...
This article explores the operation of regulatory provisions for worker occupational health and safety (OHS) representation in coalmining in Australia. Using data on inspections, combined with qualitative interviews, it looks at what occurs in a generally hostile labour relations climate and what supports or constrains representation in this scenar...
This paper explores the practice of worker representation coalmining in Australia, in which there are both serious risks to health and safety and where regulatory provisions on worker representation on health and safety are longstanding. Despite their longevity, their operation has been little studied. The aim of the paper is to address this gap by...
This study considers the actions of worker health and safety representatives in coalmines in Queensland, where there is little evidence of the facilitating role of management previous studies have associated with the successful operation of worker representation in occupational health and safety. It examines how worker representatives deliver their...
This article traces the legal regulation of the health and safety of workers and others at work, from the early nineteenth century to the widespread reforms in occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation since the 1970s. The emphasis is on Europe, North America, and Australia. The article examines four themes of particular importance in the dev...
The Road Safety Remuneration Act 2012 (Cth) (the Act) explicitly enables the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal to make orders that can impose binding requirements on all the participants in the road transport supply chain, including consignors and consignees at the apex of the chain, for the pay and safety of both employee and independent contracto...
Supply chain outsourcing has posed problems for conventional labour regulation, which focuses on employers contracting directly with workers, particularly employees. These difficulties have been exacerbated by the traditional trifurcated approach to regulation of pay and conditions, work health and safety and workers’ compensation. This paper analy...
This article introduces the collection of six papers that commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the tabling of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct (‘the Fitzgerald Report’). The report exposed the entrenched corruption among Queensland’s political and police leaders, deeply in...
This paper analyses recent Australian debates about the use of the criminal law in work health and safety regulation. It argues that these debates have to be seen in the context of the historical development of work health and safety regulation in the United Kingdom and Australia. The first part of the paper shows that, since the late 19th century,...
It examines the implications of the shift from specification to process based regulation, in which attention has been increasingly directed to the means of managing OHS more systematically at a time in which a major restructuring of work has occurred in response to the globalised economy. These changes provide both the context and material for a wi...
Legislation giving prominence to psychosocial risk factors at work has changed the role of government occupational health and safety (OHS) inspectors in many countries. Yet little is known about how inspectorates have responded to these changes. Between 2003 and 2007 an Australian study was undertaken on OHS standards, entailing detailed documentar...
Late in 2009, the Australian Workplace Relations Ministers' Council endorsed the model Work Health and Safety Bill 2009, which is to be adopted by all Australian governments (federal, state and territory) from 01 January 2012. This paper describes and analyses two key sets of provisions in this model legislation. The first establishes a 'primary' d...
'An impressively broad and sophisticated study of a critical aspect of OHS regulation. This is the best socio-legal analysis available of the contexts, strategies and practices involved in inspection of approaches to managing health and safety in the face of change.' © David Walters, Richard Johnstone, Kaj Frick, Michael Quinlan, Geneviève Baril-Gi...
Enforceable undertakings are an Australian invention. They are promises enforceable in court ‘offered’ by an individual or firm who has allegedly breached the law, and accepted by a regulator. The enforceable undertaking serves as a substitute for, or augmentation of, other regulatory enforcement methods such as civil, administrative, or even crimi...
The SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Management brings together contributions from leading international scholars in an influential collection that combines both global and interdisciplinary perspectives. An indispensable resource for advanced students and researchers in the field, the handbook focuses on familiarising the reader with the fundamenta...
A now extensive body of international research has pointed to an association between changing work arrangements, especially those commonly labeled as precarious employment or contingent work with serious adverse occupational health and safety (OHS) outcomes. There is also a growing body of research pointing to how these work arrangements have weake...
The institutional and regulatory interlinkages between industrial relations (IR) and occupational health and safety (OHS) are seldom explored in the IR literature. This article begins to address this gap by examining regulatory initiatives in Australia during a period of neoliberal government. It examines the laws enacted by the federal government...
This chapter examines the provisions governing worker participation in occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australia. Australian OHS regulation has been significantly influenced by the UK Robens model, though in some aspects some of the Australian OHS statutes have gone further than Robens and have adopted Scandinavian approaches to OHS regulat...
This article introduces the collection of six papers that commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the tabling of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct (ʻthe Fitzgerald Reportʼ). The report exposed the entrenched corruption among Queenslandʼs political and police leaders, deeply in...
This article examines the use of enforceable undertakings in Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation. Enforceable undertakings are promises by persons alleged to have breached their regulatory obligations to do something, which if not done, is enforceable in court. Enforceable undertakings potentially have an important responsive...
The fragmentation of previously integrated systems of production and service delivery has been an important feature of organisational
restructuring over the last three decades. This article highlights the adverse implications of this development for the health
and safety of workers, examines the extent to which current British health and safety law...
The last two decades have witnessed a fragmentation of previously integrated systems of production and service delivery with the advent of boundary-less, networked and porous organisational forms. This trend has been associated with the growth of outsourcing and increased use of contingent workers. One consequence of these changes is the developmen...
The last two decades have witnessed a fragmentation of previously integrated systems of production and service delivery with the advent of boundary-less, networked and porous organisational forms. This trend has been associated with the growth of outsourcing and increased use of contingent workers. One consequence of these changes is the developmen...
This article examines the new model for corporate officer liability under section 144 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vie), and explores the extent to which this might effectively extend responsibility for OHS offences to members of corporate groups, such as holding companies. In doing so, the authors canvass the failure of corporat...
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to analyse the problems for occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators posed by agency work/leased labour (also known as labour hire in Australasia), using Australian evidence.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is based on an examination of prosecutions involving labour hire firms along with othe...
Over the past 20 years there has been a significant refashioning of the labour market within Australia and other industrialised countries. This paper examines the implications of the growth of more flexible work arrangements for mechanisms designed to facilitate worker involvement in occupational health and safety at the workplace a pivotal feature...
This article examines the relationship between two concepts that are central to Australian OHS legislation, the notion of reasonably practicable' and the risk management principles. The article discusses the way in which the courts and the OHS statutes have interpreted the notion of reasonably practicable, exploring, in particular, how the courts h...
This chapter examines the regulation of 'work': principally the circumstances in which labour is engaged and the conditions attaching to the work relationships which are consequently formed and carried on. Fundamentally, this is the subject area labelled 'labour law'in modern-day legal, academic, and professional discourse. This chapter also explor...
In the OHS field increasing use is being made of administrative penalties to enforce OHS legislation. Infringement notices (also known as penalty notices or on-the-spot fines) are used in several Australian jurisdictions and there are plans to introduce them in others. Overseas jurisdictions with some form of OHS administrative penalty include the...
The growing practice of outsourcing within many industrialized countries has placed increasing pressure on occupational health and safety (OHS) regulatory regimes and the agencies that administer them. After briefly identifying how outsourcing/subcontracting can undermine OHS, the paper analyzes attempts to regulate these problems in Australia and...
This paper describes, analyses and compares two regulatory regimes which cover the road transport industry in Australia - occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation, and the National Road Transport Commission's (NRTC) proposed model road transport legislation. The central questions examined in the paper are (i) what obligations do these laws...
This paper reports on an empirically based study of occupational safety and health prosecutions in the Magistrates’ courts in the State of Victoria, Australia. It examines the way in which the courts construct occupational safety and health issues during prosecutions against alleged offenders, and then theorises the role of the criminal law in heal...
Book reviewed in this article:
Fiona Haines, Corporate Regulation: Beyond ‘Punish Or Persuade’
This paper reports on an empirically-based study of the way in which the Magistrates' Courts in Victoria, Australia, construct occupational health and safety (OHS) issues when hearing prosecutions for offences under OHS legislation. Since the Factory and Shops Act 1885, the Victorian parliament has responded to this problem by enacting statutory st...
Occupational health and safety (OHS) in each of the Australian jurisdictions is regulated by legislation based on the 1972 British Robens Report. This article describes the form of OHS regulation that preceded the Robens reforms and outlines and critically evaluates the Robens recommendations. It examines the provisions of the post-Robens Australia...
In the past decade, Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators have increasingly changed the form of OHS standards from the traditional approach of detailed and prescriptive standards to performance and process-based standards, typically requiring duty holders to identify hazards and assess and control risks. The Division of Workpla...
Acknowledgments..Tables and figures..Contributors..Introduction - Rosemary Hunter, Richard Ingleby and Richard Johnstone..PART ONE..1 Law and history in black and white - Penelope Mathew, Rosemary Hunter and Hilary Charlesworth..PART TWO..2 Themes in liberal legal and constitutional theory - David Wood, Rosemary Hunter and Richard Ingleby..3 Econom...
This paper takes issue with those who are currently arguing in favor of recourse to charges of manslaughter in some cases of occupational fatality. Such a step, it is argued, would effec tively involve collusion with a protracted historical process which rendered occupational health and safety offences ambi guous with regard to their criminality. T...
In July 2006, the ‘Of the South’ symposium was hosted by the Socio-Legal Research Centre at Griffith University. This issue of the GLR features a number of essays which emerged from that symposium. The central issue of the symposium was simple: how is it possible to actualise and experience lawful relations in the South? The specific focus of atten...
A number of disputes and legal battles have characterized recent conservative efforts to direct tlre discussion of industrial relations in Atrstralia towards issues such as the reduction of union power. The case discussed here concerns an attack on compulsory unionism. an employee successfully claimed that his disnrissal for refusal to join a trade...
Labour lawyers wanting to broaden their field beyond the traditional narrowness of the employment relationship do so by employing a concept of regulation that has both economic and social objectives. They have called for law to be seen 'in the wider framework of social relations' with 'a longer time frame for analysis', and for an approach to the f...
