Industrial relations decentralisation and the growth of 12-hour shifts in Australia

In the last two decades, increasing numbers of workplaces in Australia have introduced 12-hour shifts. This increase is due, in part, to government policies aimed at promoting labour flexibility. The purpose of this paper is to examine the cover afforded by the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and other industrial relations legislation in terms of shift-workers’ health and safety. Particular reference is made to the broader social, economic and political context surrounding the introduction and use of 12-hour shifts, as it is this context that shapes the constraints and opportunities facing employers and employees in the work arrangements they choose and how they are negotiated. We conclude that the current system of regulating industrial relations in Australia is largely outcome-focused and inadequate. The bargaining process receives little regulation in terms of considering how changes could affect health and safety in the workplace or how changes might affect individual workers. As a result, the increased introduction of unsafe shiftworking arrangements is a worrying, and likely, prospect.

Do Australian public sector employees have the type of culture they want in the era of new public management?

New public management theory proposes that public sector organisations should be managed more like private sector organisations. It is therefore expected that public sector managers will have preferences for an organisational culture that will reflect the culture of private sector organisations, with an external rather than internal orientation. The current research investigated the idea that managers' perceptions of ideal organisational culture would be different to the bureaucratic model of culture (internally oriented), which has traditionally been associated with public sector organisations. Responses to a competing values culture inventory were received from 925 public sector employees. Results indicated that the bureaucratic model is still pervasive; however, managers prefer a culture that is more external, and less control focussed, as expected. Lower level employees expressed a desire for a culture that emphasised human relations values.

Effects of psychological contract breach on performance of IT employees: The mediating role of affective commitment

In this study, we investigated the relationships between psychological contract breach, affective commitment, and two types of employee performance (i.e. civic virtue behaviour and in-role performance). It was predicted that an experience of contract breach can severely hurt the affective commitment of the employees and this, in turn, results in poor in-role performance and less civic virtue behaviours. Results revealed that affective commitment had differential mediating effects on the two types of employee performance. That is, affective commitment mediated the relationship between breach and self-reported and supervisor-rated civic virtue, but not the relationship between breach and in-role performance.

Meatworkers float during Mayday procession 1965 Brisbane Australia

Meatworkers float during Mayday procession 1965 Brisbane Australia. The Australasian Meat Industry Employees' Union, originally called the Australasian Federated Butchers Employees' Union, was formed in 1905 as an organisation of skilled and unskilled workers in all sectors of the Australian meat processing industry. Faced with a volatile industrial relations environment, AMIEU members developed a reputation for militancy and the AMIEU became one of Australia's most significant unions. In Queensland the union has been involved in many bitter industrial disputes, including the Townsville meatworkers' strike of 1918-19 and the 1946 meat industry strike.

Nitrogen relations of natural and disturbed plant communities in tropical Australia

Nitrogen relations of natural and disturbed tropical plant communities in northern Australia (Kakadu National Park) were studied. Plant and soil N characteristics suggested that differences in N source utilisation occur at community and species level. Leaf and xylem sap N concentrations of plants in different communities were correlated with the availability of inorganic soil N (NH4+ and NO3-). In general, rates of leaf NO3- assimilation were low. Even in communities with a higher N status, including deciduous monsoon forest, disturbed wetland, and a revegetated mine waste rock dump, levels of leaf nitrate reductase, xylem and leaf NO3 levels were considerably lower than those that have been reported for eutrophic communities. Although NO3- assimilation in escarpment and eucalypt woodlands, and wetland, was generally low, within these communities there was a suite of species that exhibited a greater capacity for NO3- assimilation. These high-NO3- species were mainly annuals, resprouting herbs or deciduous trees that had leaves with high N contents. Ficus, a high-NO3- species, was associated with soil exhibiting higher rates of net mineralisation and net nitrification. Low-NO3- species were evergreen perennials with low leaf N concentrations. A third group of plants, which assimilated NO3- (albeit at lower rates than the high-NO3- species), and had high-N leaves, were leguminous species. Acacia species, common in woodlands, had the highest leaf N contents of all woody species. Acacia species appeared to have the greatest potential to utilise the entire spectrum of available N sources. This versatility in N source utilisation may be important in relation to their high tissue N status and comparatively short life cycle. Differences in N utilisation are discussed in the context of species life strategies and mycorrhizal associations.

Subgroup relations: A comparison of mutual intergroup differentiation and common ingroup identity models of prejudice reduction

Two studies examined relations between groups (humanities and math-science students) that implicitly or explicitly share a common superordinate category (university student). In Experiment 1, 178 participants performed a noninteractive decision-making task during which category salience was manipulated in a 2 (superordinate category salience) x 2 (subordinate category salience) between-groups design. Consistent with the mutual intergroup differentiation model, participants for whom both categories were salient exhibited the lowest levels of bias, whereas bias was strongest when the superordinate category alone was made salient. This pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 135). In addition, Experiment 2 demonstrated that members of subgroups that are nested within a superordinate category are more sensitive to how the superordinate category is represented than are members of subgroups that extend beyond the boundaries of the superordinate category.