Employee Relations: An International Journal

Raymond Markey; Ann Hodgkinson; Jo Kowalczyk

2002 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450210420884

The international trend in the growth and incidence of "non-standard employment", and its highly gendered nature, is well documented. Similarly, interest in employee involvement or participation by academics and practitioners has seen the emergence of a rapidly growing body of literature. Despite the continued interest in each of these areas, the literature is relatively silent when it comes to where the two areas intersect, that is, what the implications are for employee participation in the growth of non-standard employment. This paper seeks to redress this relative insularity in the literature by examining some broad trends in this area in Australia. The literature lacks one clear, accepted definition of "non-standard" employment. For ease of definition, and because of the nature of the available data, we focus on part-time employment in this paper. The paper analyses data from the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey of 1995 (AWIRS 95). It tests the hypotheses that part-time employees enjoy less access to participatory management practices in the workplace than their full-time counterparts, and that this diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by female workers in comparison with their male colleagues, since the part-time workforce is predominantly feminised. These hypotheses were strongly confirmed. This has major implications for workplace equity, and for organisational efficiency.

Sandra Jones

2002 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450210420893

This paper argues that a new theory of community industrial relations is needed that recognises fewer boundaries between work and family. The theory needs to recognise a mutual exchange between the traditional "actors" in the industrial relationship (unions, employers and the government) and "interactors" in the community rather than continue to assume a separation between the external and internal industrial environment that has underpinned traditional industrial relations theory. More importantly the theory needs to be gender inclusive and recognise the important role played by women as a link between industrial actors and the community. The paper presents examples of community-union activity to illustrate the reality of the decrease in separation between community and industrial parties. In so doing the paper draws on the experiences of female partners of male unionists in traditional male workplaces. The paper proposes a new gender inclusive model of community industrial relations. Based on this model the paper proposes a new theory of community industrial relations in which interchange occurs between the traditional industrial relations actors and various groups of interactors within the community within the broader social/cultural, economic, political, and legal environment, for mutual advantage of all parties. This theory is in its formative stage and this requires further testing before it can be claimed as a general theory.

Fiona Colgan; Sue Ledwith

2002 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450210420901

Among trade unions, women, black, disabled and lesbian and gay members are increasingly recognised as significant in the drive for increases in membership. In turn, unions have come under mounting pressure from these constituencies to ensure that their interests and concerns are represented within the union and at the bargaining table. The challenge is how to reformulate notions and practices of trade union democracy to recognise that membership is increasingly diverse and diversely politicised. Here we examine how traditional approaches to trade union democracy have been revised following demands for gender democracy and the need to reflect membership diversity, and consider whether such strategies are sufficient. We do so by drawing on research with two unions; the print union, the GPMU, a private sector industrial union where women make up only 17 per cent of the membership, and the public service union UNISON, where women are three-quarters of the members.

Lise Lotte Hansen

2002 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450210420910

The industrial relations tradition values empirical analysis and research usable for policy making. Considerations about epistemology and ontology and their consequences for the research are not integrated in the tradition. Just as daily research only very seldom relates to higher-level theorising, a case in point being the development of a common theoretical framework, theoretical discussions are mostly separated from daily research into special rooms where discussion and development takes places among a few specialists. The industrial relations tradition also keeps women and research in gender in the periphery. This has consequences not only for the visibility of women's labour market participation and for the status of the research in gender, but also for the industrial relations tradition, as it will become less able to see new tendencies and developments at the labour market and in industrial relations. The first part of the article discusses how the tradition - in spite of a growing acceptance of gender research - is still influenced by a male norm. In the second part the article endeavours to relate the under-theorising of the IR tradition and the marginalisation of a gender perspective. The last part of the article introduces an integrated gender perspective as one - although incomplete - way to overcome these problems.

Judy Gray; Heather Laidlaw

2002 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450210420929

This study uses an empirical case study to examine the relationship between flexible work arrangements (whether employees work on a full-time or part-time basis) and one aspect of employee relations, namely communication satisfaction. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from employees in a major Australian retail organisation, resulting in 127 useable responses. The survey included the communication satisfaction questionnaire. Overall, respondents' ratings of communication satisfaction indicated that at best they were only slightly satisfied. Part-time employees were significantly more dissatisfied than full-time employees on four dimensions of communication satisfaction. The study provides evidence that part-time employees are outside mainstream communication in the stores examined. The implications of the results for employee relations are discussed. Future research directions are identified.