Temporary agency workers and the contribution of workplace unfamiliarity to workplace injuries

International and Australian research agrees that temporary agency workers have a higher incidence of workplace injury, and those injuries are more severe. Much less research has been undertaken upon the cause of those injuries. This paper explores one factor contributing to their poorer occupational health and safety through an examination of the role of unfamiliarity with the hosts’ tasks and workplace. The paper commences with a review of the temporary agency employment literature relevant to placing workers in unfamiliar workplaces, and the OHS literature related to timing of injuries. Archival research on investigated workers’ compensation claims for a sample of agency workers and direct hire workers in Victoria is then analysed to assess the importance of unfamiliarity, and training undertaken to overcome that unfamiliarity, for these injured workers. The analysis includes an examination of the timing of the injury in relation to the workers’ placement with the host, and regression analysis on a range of characteristics related to newness at a host’s workplace. The findings confirm that agency workers are especially vulnerable to injury early in their placement, and insufficient attention is given to accommodating unfamiliarity to counter workers’ vulnerability in new workplaces.

Knowledge, risk perceptions and condom usage in male sex workers from three Australian cities

The study identifies factors associated with knowledge and perception of risk of HIV/AIDS, as well as attitudes to and usage of condoms by a sample of male sex workers (MSW). One hundred and eighty-five male sex workers completed a self-reported questionnaire, including knowledge about HIV transmission, attitudes to condom use and perceptions and personal susceptibility to HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk, and a two-week diary recording use of condom during commercial sex encounters. The findings reveal that condom use was found in 77.7% of the encounters with clients and the majority of the respondents perceived themselves to be at no risk for HIV because of sex work. Independent sex workers from Melbourne and workers who owned their place of residence used condoms in a significant lower proportion. Generally speaking, knowledge about the risks associated with AIDS was high, with respondents showing lower knowledge about the risks associated with unprotected receptive or active oral sex. Participants held a positive attitude to condom use; most considered the provisions of condoms to be their responsibility rather than clients; and they were more worried about contracting an STI than HIV. Those who scored higher on the knowledge scale had more positive attitudes to condom use and those who had a more positive attitude to condom use recorded a perceived lower risk of contracting STI but not HIV. The study discusses the relevance of these findings for public health risk reduction and sexual health education campaigns.

Alcohol and drug use in Australian male sex workers: its relationship to the safety outcome of the sex encounter

This paper describes the self-reporting patterns of alcohol and drug consumption among male sex workers (MSWs) in three Australian cities during commercial sex encounters, and examines to what extent alcohol and drugs are used and whether this is related to the safe/unsafe outcome of the commercial sex encounter. One hundred and eighty-six MSWs from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne completed a diary following each commercial sex encounter over a two-week period. MSWs reported 2,087 commercial sex encounters during the study period. Alcohol or drug consumption was reported in 50.5% of the encounters.

'Don't be a smart arse': Young workers, individualization, and an ethic of enterprise in Jamie's Kitchen

In Jamie’s Kitchen the high profile celebrity chef Jamie Oliver set out to transform a group of unemployed young Londoners into the enterprising, ideal worker of 21st century flexible capitalism. The paper will argue that this reality TV series provides a means to explore key features of new work regimes. We will analyse particular aspects of the increasingly powerful individualising and normalising processes shaping the lifeworlds of young workers in a globalising risk society. Processes that require those who wish to be positively identified as entrepreneurial to do particular sorts of work on themselves; or suffer the consequences.
Drawing on Foucault’s later work on the care of the self, and the  individualization theses of the reflexive modernization literature, we identify and analyse the forms of personhood that various institutions, organisations and individuals seek to encourage in young workers; and the ways in which institutionalised risk environments increasingly individualise the risks and uncertainties associated with labour market participation. The paper argues that our understandings of what it means to be a worker of the world, are being rearticulated around the idea that we are free to choose. And we must exercise this freedom – reap its rewards, carry its obligations – as individuals.

A guide to interviewing children : essential skills for counsellors, police, lawyers and social workers

This book has been written by two people who really understand children. [They show how to] create opportunities to reduce the trauma of the interview and significantly improve the quality of the information obtained. Chief Constable A.J. Butler Gloucestershire Constabulary A few years ago, a Chief Justice said that it was unnecessary to educate lawyers and judges in the techniques of interviewing children because it was 'just common sense'. The authors show that successful interviewing requires much more than 'common sense'. Freda Briggs, Professor of Child Development, University of South Australia...an excellent book for students and professionals in forensic psychology, policing and social work.Helen Westcott, PhD, The Open UniversityIt is critical that children are interviewed properly in cases of suspected abuse or where the children may be witnesses to or victims of a crime. Poor questioning can upset the child further and contaminate evidence that may be needed in court. Interviewing Children is a practical guide to interviewing techniques for a range of professionals including welfare workers, psychologists, schoolteachers and counsellors, police officers and lawyers. Step by step, it outlines the key stages of an interview, and how to respond to the child's needs during an interview. It explains how to deal with children of different ages and from different backgrounds, and also how to work with their parents. Particular attention is paid to the sensitive issue of sexual abuse, and the problems created by multiple interviews.Clare Wilson lectures in the Department of Psychology at the University of Sydney. Martine Powell lectures in the School of Psychology at Deakin University. Both have trained police officers, social workers and legal professionals in interviewing techniques in Australia and the UK.------------------Full quotes to go on half-title page:This book has been written by two people who really understand children. In passing on their knowledge to professionals who engage with children in the interview room, they create opportunities to reduce the trauma of the interview and significantly improve the quality of the information obtained. Writing in a clear and fresh style, the authors have produced a book which is valuable as a point of reference, a day to day tool and as a training aid to develop skills.Chief Constable A.J. Butler Gloucestershire ConstabularyThis book should be read by all professionals who work with children and could findthemselves receiving disclosures of abuse. It is practical, easy to read and full of examples and hints. It should be a compulsory text for social work studen

Class act : Melbourne Workers Theatre, 1987-2007

Celebrates the company's artistic achievements and successes over the last two decades through interviews, essays and high quality images of key productions, and recounts its history, its evolving relationship with the embattled trade union movement, and its on-going engagement with working class, indigenous and migrant communities.

Male social workers in child family welfare : new directions for research

Gillingham reflects on the developments in theory and research about male social workers in child and family welfare. The position of male social workers in direct practice in child and family welfare is contentious given that men commit a majority of the physical and sexual assaults against women and children.

'Class' and political theatre : the case of Melbourne workers theatre

Traditionally, class has been an important category of identity in discussions of political theatre. However, in recent years the concept has fallen out of favour, partly because of changes in the forces and relations of capitalist production. The conventional Marxist use of the term, which defined an individual's class position in relation to the position they occupied in the capitalist production process, seemed anachronistic in an era of globalization. Moreover, the rise of identity politics, queer theory, feminism, and post-colonialism have proffered alternative categories of identity that have displaced class as the primary marker of self. Glenn D'Cruz reconsiders the role of class in the cultural life of Australia by examining the recent work of Melbourne Workers Theatre, a theatre company devoted to promoting class-consciousness, in relation to John Frow's more recent re-conceptualization of class. He looks specifically at two of the company's plays, the award-winning Who's Afraid of the Working Class? and The Waiting Room, with reference to Frow's work on class, arguing that these productions articulate a more complex and sophisticated understanding of class and its relation to politics of race and gender today.