http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9107 Minimum wages remain a feature of advanced economies. Even in countries with neo-liberal policy settings, the minimum wage remains. Why, in a neo-liberal context, are minimum wages retained? To consider these issues we examine Australia, the UK and the USA. We also examine the processes associated with minimum wage adjustment including coverage, enforcement, frequency, determination criteria and timing. On these issues we demonstrate some major differences across the minimum wage systems. 2013-03-18T06:04:49.238Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:11737 In Australia centralised wage determination and collective arrangements prevailed over the period 1983-86, through an award system that specified minimum wages and working conditions across enterprises. Since then the industrial relations system has been significantly reformed by both state and federal governments. The federal Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cwlth), in particular, has facilitated both non-union agreements and direct employment contracts. Using a technique developed by Morris, Bernhardt and Handcock (1994), we show that the period of labour market reform, 1986-98, has coincided with increasing hours and full-time weekly earnings dispersion that has typically taken the form of polarisation. We conclude that labour market reform in Australia has been a contributory factor in the polarisation of earnings, but that a polarised earnings distribution is not necessary for the achievement of full employment. Finally we briefly consider the implications of the Australian findings with respect to earnings and hours of employment for equity, employment opportunities and living standards. 2012-10-16T04:40:38.519Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1193 The passage of the Work Choices Act 2005 serves to eliminate one of the last symbols of fairness in Australian society; the judicially-determined conciliation and arbitration system and wage-setting machinery. In this paper we examine the flawed conceptual framework, which underpins the Government's view that reducing the rights and protections of workers will produce superior labour market outcomes. We argue that the principal failure of the Work Choices Act is that it ignores the role of macroeconomic policy in directly addressing the efficiency and equity issues that have been said to motivate its provisions. The Act also ignores the different bargaining power of workers and capital and pays no attention to the serious social repercussions that will flow when labour is treated like a commodity. The imperative to minimise labour costs under Work Choices will spur a race to the bottom and the profusion of insecure, low-paid, poor-quality work in an economy characterised by allocative and dynamic inefficiency. 2012-03-08T04:20:01.928Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9954 In 2006 money wages grew more slowly than in 2005 and within Reserve Bank limits with no evidence of generalized wage pressures arising from skill shortages. The Reserve Bank raised interest rates three times during the year, further reducing housing affordability. Mortgagee sales of homes have exhibited a significant increase. There was intense media attention as to the impact on wages and conditions of the implementation of the Work Choices legislation. The long-awaited first decision by the Fair Pay Commission yielded an increase of AUS$27.36 per week for about 1m workers payable from 1 December. The lowest weekly wage rose to AUS$511.86, which represents a marginal real wage cut. 2012-02-08T23:50:05.639Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:6418 The Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 changes the architecture of labour market regulation in Australia in a significant way. The focus of this article is on changes to the regulatory framework for minimum wage determination and the rationale for, and likely consequences of, conferring this power on the Australian Fair Pay Commission. Underpinning the Work Choices package is the view that Safety Net wage rises awarded by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission have had negative effects on employment. In this article we establish that the evidence to support this claim is weak, and is being used to engineer a historic shift in the objectives of the Australian wage setting process. We argue that the new legislation will act as a downward drag on the pay and conditions of minimum wage workers and advance an alternative policy approach in which attaining full employment does not require us to abandon the principle of fairness or a decent wage floor. 2012-02-01T00:50:01.896Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:6183 In this paper we propose that the rise in underemployment has changed the wage setting process in the labour market and is now used by employers as a means of disciplining wages growth. We use the Australian labour market as the empirical example. Our further work will focus on other economies. The paper is laid out as follows. Section 2 traces the rise in underemployment in Australia to the dynamics that accompanied the 1991 recession. Firms rapidly replaced full-time jobs with fractional opportunities. Section 3 considers wage and productivity movements in Australia and finds that over the recent growth cycle, real wages have trailed behind labour productivity and hence there has been a massive redistribution of national income to profit. Further, the relation between the employment rate and real wages growth has changed dramatically over the last growth period. Compared to earlier periods, rising employment rates have very little impact on real wages growth. Section 4 develops a theoretical model grounded in labour market segmentation theory to explain these trends. Section 5 provides formal econometric evidence to support the proposition that underemployment is a significant negative influence on inflation. Concluding remarks follow. 2010-05-07T05:41:22.284Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:4159 The issue of the ‘Stolen Wages’ – earnings withheld from Aboriginal workers throughout the twentieth century – has made prominent headlines in the last few years. The questions surrounding these disappearing monies will undoubtedly continue to be vexed, given the history of state control over Aboriginal labour, and the concomitant practice of governments withholding the wages of Aboriginal workers in trust funds. The following discussion of the trust fund system as it operated in New South Wales under the Aborigines Protection Board’s regime (1883-1940), is intended to illuminate the context and the complexities of the issue and its signifi cance for racial interrelations then, and indeed now. By interrogating the role of white employers in particular, this article makes a contribution to a deeper comprehension of the white experience and involvement in this history of wage withholding, an understanding critical in achieving the support of non-Aboriginal Australians in the Aboriginal workers’ cause today. 2010-04-27T05:06:58.405Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:5573 In 2007 money wages rose marginally faster than in 2006 but there was no evidence of generalized wage pressures arising from skill shortages. The Reserve Bank raised interest rates twice during the year, further reducing housing affordability. The Fair Pay Commission decision in July temporarily restored the real wages of the lowest paid, but there was further compression of the lower deciles of the wage distribution. With petrol prices continuing to rise, household living standards are under threat, particularly those of workers reliant on the wage adjustment through the Commission whose next decision will not be operational until October 2008. The election of the Labor Government in November led to speculation as to extent to which the Work Choices legislation would be amended. 2010-04-27T04:39:56.739Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:5294 This paper provides an overview of recent developments in rural labour markets in Bangladesh and also examines the trends and movements of agricultural productivity and real wages with annual data for the period 1950-2006. The paper links the movements of agricultural real wages to macroeconomic developments in general and agricultural development in particular. As part of empirical investigation, the paper develops a simple model of agricultural real wages that depend on agricultural productivity. In order to examine the long-run relationship between agricultural productivity and real wages, the paper applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds testing approach. Empirical results suggest that there exists a long-run relationship between agricultural productivity and real wages, and that agricultural productivity can be treated as a long-run forcing variable in explaining agricultural real wages. In the dynamic specification of real wages, the coefficient on one-period lagged error-correction term bears the expected negative sign and is significant. The forecasting ability of the error correction model is satisfactory with respect to the level or the percentage change of real wages. The overall results are consistent with the findings of earlier studies that agricultural productivity is a key determinant of real wages in Bangladesh. 2010-04-27T04:33:18.189Z ]]>