The practical potential of self-advocacy for improving safety outcomes for school-aged workers

Young workers are over-represented in workplace injury statistics and there is growing interest in addressing their vulnerability and safety exposure. Such concerns have been raised within a broader discursive framework of responsibilisation which has seen a transfer of responsibility for workplace safety from employer to worker. This article examines the potential for self-advocacy as a strategy for improving the safety of young workers through the provision of resources to articulate and act on workplace rights. The study utilises data derived from 48 group interviews involving 216 high school students (13–16 years of age) at 19 high schools in Queensland, Australia, who were asked to discuss their knowledge and experience of workplace rights and responsibilities. The limitations of the safety self-advocacy approach are explored, including the social, developmental and organisational issues that might affect the ability or willingness of school-aged workers to self-advocate. The findings reveal that the notion of self-advocacy is internalised by young people before they even enter the formal labour market but that in practice, attempts by young people to enact rights to safety are often dismissed or undermined.

Formal complaints of workplace sexual harassment lodged with Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissions - 1 July 2009 - 31 December 2009

This report presents an analysis of quantitative data collected from the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Anti-Discrimination Commission of Queensland, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales, the Equal Opportunity Commission of South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory Human Rights Commission, the Equal Opportunity Commission Western Australia, the Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Commission, and the Office of the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner (Tasmania) (hereafter referred to as the Commissions). The data comprise formal complaints lodged under the various federal, state and territory anti-discrimination laws in the period 1 July 2009 to 31 December 2009 where a complainant had alleged sexual harassment in the area of employment.

Workplace human rights reporting : a study of Australian garment and retail companies

The opening of the Australian economy in a globalised world has led to Australian garment and retail corporations moving their manufacturing overseas and acquiring goods from overseas providers. This is usually better for the corporations’ bottom-line, as they can purchase goods overseas at a fraction of their local cost, partly due to cheap labour. Australia is one of the many OECD countries not to have a well regulated environment for workplace human rights. This study examines 18 major Australian retail and garment manufacturing corporations and finds that workplace human rights reporting is poor, based on content analysis of their annual reports, corporate social responsibility reports and websites. This is probably due to the failure of the Australian Government to provide adequate oversight by promulgating mandatory reporting standards for both local and overseas operations of Australian companies. This permits corporations to avoid reporting their workplace human rights standards and breaches.

Electronic workplace surveillance and employee privacy : a comparative analysis of privacy protection in Australia and the United States

More than a century ago in their definitive work “The Right to Privacy” Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis highlighted the challenges posed to individual privacy by advancing technology. Today’s workplace is characterised by its reliance on computer technology, particularly the use of email and the Internet to perform critical business functions. Increasingly these and other workplace activities are the focus of monitoring by employers. There is little formal regulation of electronic monitoring in Australian or United States workplaces. Without reasonable limits or controls, this has the potential to adversely affect employees’ privacy rights. Australia has a history of legislating to protect privacy rights, whereas the United States has relied on a combination of constitutional guarantees, federal and state statutes, and the common law. This thesis examines a number of existing and proposed statutory and other workplace privacy laws in Australia and the United States. The analysis demonstrates that existing measures fail to adequately regulate monitoring or provide employees with suitable remedies where unjustifiable intrusions occur. The thesis ultimately supports the view that enacting uniform legislation at the national level provides a more effective and comprehensive solution for both employers and employees. Chapter One provides a general introduction and briefly discusses issues relevant to electronic monitoring in the workplace. Chapter Two contains an overview of privacy law as it relates to electronic monitoring in Australian and United States workplaces. In Chapter Three there is an examination of the complaint process and remedies available to a hypothetical employee (Mary) who is concerned about protecting her privacy rights at work. Chapter Four provides an analysis of the major themes emerging from the research, and also discusses the draft national uniform legislation. Chapter Five details the proposed legislation in the form of the Workplace Surveillance and Monitoring Act, and Chapter Six contains the conclusion.

Workplace Equality in International Organizations: A Way Forward

In this contribution, I am interested in how discrimination issues are manifested in employment relations in the United Nations (UN), a public forum to all states political leaders to advance their concerns, the World Bank, a financial organization that promotes economic development, mainly in developing countries, and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the eldest and largest global public program of the World Bank with a strategic network of diverse stakeholders that harnesses the best in science to produce more and better food, reduce poverty and sustain environments. Considering the immunity and privileges granted to international organizations, what are the current available legal procedures, at the national or international level, for workplace equality? How accountable and transparent are they, based on the practice of these organizations? Can discrimination biases that go beyond the known individual-based discrimination claims be identified? If so, how can they be challenged and changed? Based of the special position of international civil servants in international organizations and the duty to protect their fundamental rights, I claim that the limitation of opportunity by discriminatory biases and the psychic burden on the individual staff member, on daily basis, qualify for a workplace wrong and call for independent and impartial legal procedures that would ensure due process and fair treatment.

Below the ‘tip of the iceberg’: extra-legal responses to workplace sexual harassment

Despite longstanding and explicit legal frameworks for preventing and responding to sexual harassment, only a small proportion of those sexually harassed use legal avenues of redress to seek justice. In contrast to legal cases which constitute the ‘tip of the iceberg’, this study examines extra-legal strategies — the less visible but more frequent, ‘everyday’, formal and informal organizational practices. We report on a national prevalence survey conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission which examined how ‘targets’ use formal organizational grievance mechanisms, and/or other informal methods to redress, resist or avoid workplace sexual harassment. The findings revealed that the majority of targets do not formally report it because of fear of retribution or that nothing will be done, but they sometimes use apparently proactive or assertive alternative strategies, such as seeking informal assistance and ‘dealing with the problem themselves’. These responses occur in the context of extra-legal facets of organizational life which affect the extent to which sexual harassment and other unfavorable and discriminatory acts are tolerated.

Encourage, support, act : bystander approaches to sexual harassment in the workplace

Sexual harassment in the workplace is a persistent and pervasive problem in Australia and elsewhere, demanding new and creative responses.1 One significant area that may inform prevention and response strategies is the area of ‘bystander approaches’. In examining the potential for bystander approaches to prevent and respond to workplace sexual harassment, this paper draws upon a range of theoretical and empirical research.

Regulating for corporate human rights abuses : the emergence of corporate reporting on the ILO’s human rights standards within the global garment manufacturing and retail industry

Despite the ubiquitous nature of the discourse on human rights there is currently little research on the emergence of disclosure by multinational corporations on their human rights obligations or the regulatory dynamic that may lie behind this trend. In an attempt to begin to explore the extent to which, if any, the language of human rights has entered the discourse of corporate accountability, this paper investigates the adoption of the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) human rights standards by major multinational garment retail companies that source products from developing countries, as disclosed through their reporting media. The paper has three objectives. Firstly, to empirically explore the extent to which a group of multinational garment retailers invoke the language of human rights when disclosing their corporate responsibilities. The paper reviews corporate reporting media including social responsibility codes of conduct, annual reports and stand-alone social responsibility reports released by 18 major global clothing and retail companies during a period from 1990 to 2007. We find that the number of companies adopting and disclosing on the ILO's workplace human rights standards has significantly increased since 1998 – the year in which the ILO's standards were endorsed and accepted by the global community (ILO, 1998). Secondly, drawing on a combination of Responsive Regulation theory and neo-institutional theory, we tentatively seek to understand the regulatory space that may have influenced these large corporations to adopt the language of human rights obligations. In particular, we study the role that International Governmental Organisation's (IGO) such as ILO may have played in these disclosures. Finally, we provide some critical reflections on the power and potential within the corporate adoption of the language of human rights.

Implementation mechanism: Protection against harassment of women at workplace

Pakistan is widely known and appreciated in the world for its history, Islamic culture and norms. Since the creation of Pakistan, it inherited poverty in its roots. There are many reasons for poverty but one lies on the shoulder of women who are 50% of the total population of Pakistan. On the apex of it, women do not take part in the development of Pakistan because when they step out of their homes, they suffer a lot of problems. These problems are a hurdle in their active participation in development .Government has tried to create an environment for those women, who suffer different problems. Harassment of women at work place is one of those problems which discourage women in taking active part in economic and social development of society. Women Activists, from the last decade, were working for the protection of woman’s right at workplace and they succeeded in formulation of Harassment Act 2010. Since law is ineffective without its proper mechanism of implementation, steps should be taken for its proper implementation mechanism. This article aims to provide information about the provisions of law, related to the harassment of women at workplace with an attempt to explore the effectiveness of its implementation. The study was conducted in twin cities of Pakistan, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Interviews were conducted with the employees and employers of organizations, educational institutions, women activists, NGOs workers, lawyers, judges and some law enforcement officers. Group discussions were also held with teachers, students of Human rights and religious personalities. This report focuses on the implementation mechanism of new legislation in Pakistan. It also highlights some important facts related to its enforcement.