Documents Macdonald, Fiona 3 results

"The International Labour Organization's Decent Work Agenda offers a valuable alternative to the traditional framing of most contemporary employment regulation. It moves beyond the standard employment relationship to include workers in non-standard employment and the attainment of gender equality has a central place, illustrated in the ILO's 2009 campaign around 'gender equality at the heart of decent work'. While most OECD countries have endorsed the Decent Work Agenda (DWA), few have taken it up at the domestic level, apparently seeing it as something of benefit to emerging economies only. Our article draws on interviews with key government, employer, union and civil society stakeholders in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and an analysis of relevant policy documents to tease out this 'othering' of the DWA and how different understandings of gender (in)equality relate to views about its utility in the national context. We argue that assumptions that the DWA has little to offer developed economies represent a missed opportunity to rethink the gendered policy underpinnings of domestic employment regulation that are shaped by and contribute directly to gender inequality."

"Labour law changes in Australia in 2006 significantly reconfigured industrial relations institutions and the balance of power in the employment relationship – in favour of employers and against the low-paid in particular. This article analyses the changes as they affected low-waged women workers, using a moral economy framework. While acknowledging the importance of material rewards, a moral economy perspective focuses on aspects of work that are not reducible to the terms of the market. The article analyses how women articulated the effects of the legislation, and how work institutions embody moral conceptions, demonstrating how labour law change can markedly disrupt the underlying, taken-for-granted moral economy. "