Documents Tham, Joo-Cheong 2 results

"Why do employers in specific sectors use migrant workers to a significant extent? Taking temporary migrant work in the Australian food services sector as a case study, this article argues that employer demand for migrant workers is shaped by two forms of social regulation: the immigration controls that create a supply of different kinds of migrant workers, and the labour market norms and institutions that operate within a specific industrial sector. Specifically, the article argues that the cost-minimization strategy of the Australian food services sector in conjunction with its precarious work norms result in ‘demand' on the part of employers in the sector for vulnerable workers to perform precarious jobs. Such ‘demand' is met in part by the workers supplied through temporary labour migration programs who may be an attractive form of precarious labour because of the conditionalities they experience. The normalization of noncompliance with labour laws by food services employers, that stems from the broader culture of illegality in the sector, further heightens the vulnerability (and attractiveness) of temporary migrant labour, allowing employers to ‘demand' illegal working conditions. "

"This article assesses the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on labour rights in Australia. It considers this impact according to three labour rights (the right to work; the right to social protection; the right to safe and healthy working conditions) and three cross currents (the forces of inequality; the increase in employer power; social dialogue). Threading through this analysis are the relevant international labour standards, particularly the standards set by International Labour Organisation (ILO). These standards are normative standards – they point to what is morally significant. They also assist in considering how the COVID-19 crisis has altered the role of the state in relation to labour rights. Before the crisis, this role corresponded with neoliberal understandings of a market-friendly and minimal state. By comparison, international labour standards offer a different understanding of the role of the state - a social democratic understanding where the state performs an active role in regulating the market in the interest of promoting decent work. What seems to be emerging from the crisis is, however, a state that is neither fully neoliberal nor social democratic – a ‘JobMaker' state."