Australian health and safety inspectors’ perceptions and actions in relation to changed work arrangements

Extensive international research points to an association between changed work arrangements, especially those commonly labelled as contingent work, with adverse occupational health and safety (OHS) outcomes. Research also indicates these work arrangements have weakened or bypassed existing OHS and workers’ compensation regulatory regimes. However, there has been little if any research into how OHS inspectors perceive these issues and how they address them during workplace visits or investigations. Between 2003 and 2007 research was undertaken that entailed detailed documentary and statistical analysis, extended interviews with 170 regulatory managers and inspectors, and observational data collected while accompanying inspectors on 118 ‘typical’ workplace visits. Key findings are that inspectors responsible for a range of industries see altered work arrangements as a serious challenge, especially labour hire (agency work) and subcontracting. Though the law imposes clear obligations, inspectors identified misunderstanding/blameshifting and poor compliance amongst parties to these arrangements. The complexity of these work arrangements also posed logistical challenges to inspectorates.

Southern New England Social and Community Plan 2009 - Covering Local Government Authorities: Armidale Dumaresq, Guyra, Uralla and Walcha

The Southern New England (SNE) Social and Community Plan is a guide to collaborative, integrated planning involving the three spheres of government, the community and commercial sectors. The Plan is based on social justice principles such as: • Equity - fairness in resource distribution, particularly for those most in need • Access - fairer access for everyone to the economic resources and services essential to meeting their basic needs and improving their quality of life • Rights - recognition and promotion of civil rights • Participation - better opportunities for genuine participation and consultation about decisions affecting people's lives. The Plan is also aimed at improving the accountability of decision-makers, and should help the councils, in conjunction with their communities meet the state government's social justice commitments. Preparation of a social and community plan is required at least every five years, and as with most councils, Armidale Dumaresq Council (ADC) has produced two already, one in 1999 and one in 2004, following the amalgamation of the former Armidale City and Dumaresq Shire Councils in 2000. Those Councils formerly prepared their own Plans in 1999, based on shared consultancy work on a community profile. This is the first joint Southern New England Plan, featuring Armidale Dumaresq, Walcha, Uralla and Guyra Councils. This Social Plan has aimed to identify and address the needs of the local community by: • describing who makes up the community • summarising key priority issues • assessing the effectiveness of any previous plans • recommending strategic ways for council and other government and non-government agencies to met community needs.

Literacy and numeracy project: Final report 2009

Literacy and numeracy are critical for young people during and after their schooling. The subjects and courses that students undertake during their school years incorporate a range of academic literacy and numeracy practices which students must be able manage if they are to be successful. Pathways beyond schooling also require specific, and changing, understandings of, and proficiencies with, literacy and numeracy as new communication technologies increasingly impact on further study, work, and everyday life. Teaching and learning numeracy is a new emphasis in the SACE and as yet we have little understanding about the ways in which secondary schools handle this area. Students in Years 10 and 11 are at a crucial point in their educational and life pathways as they begin to refine their future aspirations. For those who have difficulty with academic literacies and numeracies – and often a long history of such problems – this period can be fraught unless teachers are able to provide specific support when it is needed, or students are able to access it from care-givers or community members. The School to Work Literacy and Numeracy Project involved teachers from nine schools across the three sectors and university researchers working together to design curriculum interventions for students with a history of low measurable achievement in literacy and/or numeracy. The project started from the premise that working with ‘rich tasks’, an approach to learning and assessment developed in the Productive Pedagogies work undertaken in Queensland (Hayes et al., 2006), would improve students’ motivation, engagement and learning and that this work could best be done by teachers working in school-based, cross-curriculum teams with a school leadership team member and a university researcher as mentor. A key idea in designing rich tasks is that students will have opportunities to demonstrate their learning in assessments which are aligned with the learning expectations (for example a film festival to publicly launch student-produced films, advertising to sell student-made cubby-houses, a household budget based on students’ likely incomes in future work). In other words the assessments should be designed to allow for authentic communication and displays of what the students have learned through serious engagement with the curriculum. The project was conducted from Term 1-4 2009, with follow-up checks with some project teachers in the early weeks of 2010.

Working the iceberg : a staffroom morality play

This play comes from a research project about how teachers understand and sustain their work in challenging secondary school classrooms. The research asked “How DO teachers work in these classrooms?” not “How SHOULD they?” In the play you meet three teachers who speak candidly about their principles, priorities and vulnerabilities to a pre-service teacher as they move between classes and staffroom. These are real people, real quotes and real feelings taken from real interview data, not idealised guidelines for ‘best practice’. Rather than templates for practice, the play offers a variety of models, issues and food for thought to discuss in teacher education programs. The project was interested in the moral dynamics of classrooms created under the Council of Australian Governments’ 2009 Compact with Young Australians, a policy move that required students to be ‘earning or learning till 17’ across all Australian states. By removing the unemployment benefit for this age group, and tying school attendance to family welfare entitlements, these policies effectively raised the minimum school-leaving age. The risk in this well-intended policy move is that a lack of suitable job opportunities will keep young people at school longer than they want to be there. The effects of this ‘earning or learning’ policy will impact some communities, schools and classrooms much harder than others. The title uses the metaphor of an iceberg to refer to the complex community-school relations that lie below classroom interactions. The idea of a morality play in the play’s title refers back to a medieval form of popular play that used characters to instruct the audience in virtues and values. In the same way, this play seeks to bring to the surface and embody the different moral principles that can inform teacher’s work. The research involved classroom ethnographies of classes for 16 to 17 years olds in non-academic pathways. Eight different teacher/ class combinations were sampled across 2 high schools, 2 TAFE colleges and I hybrid TAFE/school program in three towns experiencing chronic youth unemployment. Their timetabled lessons were observed across 3 to 4 weeks and the teachers and some students were interviewed in each site. The project was funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Award, 2012-214.

Emotional anguish at work: The mediating role of perceived rejection on workgroup mistreatment and affective outcomes

In this study, the authors pay particular attention to mistreatment directed toward an organizational member from fellow workgroup members. The study contributes to the growing body of literature that examines the mistreatment of employees in the workplace. The authors propose that mistreatment by the workgroup would contribute to feelings of rejection, over and above mistreatment by the supervisor. In addition, the authors tested the mediating role of perceived rejection between workgroup mistreatment and affective outcomes such as depression and organization-based self-esteem. Part-time working participants (N = 142) took part in the study, which required them to complete a questionnaire on workplace behaviors. Results indicated that workgroup mistreatment contributed additional variance to perceived rejection over and above supervisory mistreatment when predicting depression and organization-based self-esteem. The results also indicated that perceived rejection mediates the relationship between mistreatment and affective outcomes. Results are discussed and implications for research and practice are considered.

Using a free online questionnaire to determine the skills, competencies and knowledge required to work in a digital library environment in Australia

This paper discusses the data collection technique used to determine the skills and knowledge required of academic librarians working in a digital library environment in Australia. The research was undertaken as part of the researcher’s master’s thesis conducted at Tallinn University. The data collection instrument used was a freely available online survey tool, and its advantages and disadvantages are discussed in terms of the desired outcomes and circumstances surrounding the thesis project. Decisions regarding the design of the questionnaire are also discussed.

Wikipedia, collective authorship, and the politics of knowledge

This chapter considers the legal ramifications of Wikipedia, and other online media, such as the Encyclopedia of Life. Nathaniel Tkacz (2007) has observed: 'Wikipedia is an ideal entry-point from which to approach the shifting character of knowledge in contemporary society.' He observes: 'Scholarship on Wikipedia from computer science, history, philosophy, pedagogy and media studies has moved beyond speculation regarding its considerable potential, to the task of interpreting - and potentially intervening in - the significance of Wikipedia's impact' (Tkacz 2007). After an introduction, Part II considers the evolution and development of Wikipedia, and the legal troubles that have attended it. It also considers the establishment of rival online encyclopedia - such as Citizendium set up by Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia; and Knol, the mysterious new project of Google. Part III explores the use of mass, collaborative authorship in the field of science. In particular, it looks at the development of the Encyclopedia of Life, which seeks to document the world's biodiversity. This chapter expresses concern that Wiki-based software had to develop in a largely hostile and inimical legal environment. It contends that copyright law and related fields of intellectual property need to be reformed in order better to accommodate users of copyright material (Rimmer 2007). This chapter makes a number of recommendations. First, there is a need to acknowledge and recognize forms of mass, collaborative production and consumption - not just individual authorship. Second, the view of a copyright 'work' and other subject matter as a complete and closed piece of cultural production also should be reconceptualised. Third, the defense of fair use should be expanded to accommodate a wide range of amateur, peer-to-peer production activities - not only in the United States, but in other jurisdictions as well. Fourth, the safe harbor protections accorded to Internet intermediaries, such as Wikipedia, should be strengthened. Fifth, there should be a defense in respect of the use of 'orphan works' - especially in cases of large-scale digitization. Sixth, the innovations of open source licensing should be expressly incorporated and entrenched within the formal framework of copyright laws. Finally, courts should craft judicial remedies to take into account concerns about political censorship and freedom of speech.

Reclaiming fair use: How to put balance back in copyright

This lively book, Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, is designed to liberate people from the "Mind Forg'd Manacles" of copyright law. The authors - film and media scholar Patricia Aufderheide and professor of law and stalwart defender of the public interest Peter Jaszi - hope to help readers "understand how to think about and use copyright, and especially your right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment when you make a work - whether a blog entry, a song, a mashup, a poem, a documentary, a magazine article, a lesson plan, a scholarly archive, a slide show, a technical manual, a scrapbook, a collage, or a brochure"...

American lessons: Implementing fair use in Australia

This article discusses the recent Australian Law Reform Commission report proposing a fair use defense to copyright infringement in Australia. It examines the experience of fair use cases in the United States and draws three lessons from the jurisprudential history. First, it suggests that decisions in fair use can only really be understood within a theoretical framework, and that unless we import that framework into Australia any fair use defense will not work as expected. Secondly, the article argues that the area where fair use jurisprudence appears to be most helpful, in dealing with “transformative” works, is actually much more limited than outsiders to the US would expect. And finally, it suggests that any implementation of a factor related to market substitution should take account of the gaming of the system that has gone on in the US.

Fifield faces a hard road to bring Australia’s media regulations into the 21st century

With his feet barely under the desk, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has flagged a renewed attempt to change Australia’s media laws. Given his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull’s long-standing interest in the field – dating all the way back to his work with Kerry Packer in the 1980s – Fifield can expect the new prime minister’s backing. Fifield is set to meet with media bosses as early as next week.

Transient state work fluctuation theorem for a classical harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a harmonic bath

Based on a Hamiltonian description we present a rigorous derivation of the transient state work fluctuation theorem and the Jarzynski equality for a classical harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a harmonic heat bath, which is dragged by an external agent. Coupling with the bath makes the dynamics dissipative. Since we do not assume anything about the spectral nature of the harmonic bath the derivation is not restricted only to the Ohmic bath, rather it is more general, for a non-Ohmic bath. We also derive expressions of the average work done and the variance of the work done in terms of the two-time correlation function of the fluctuations of the position of the harmonic oscillator. In the case of an Ohmic bath, we use these relations to evaluate the average work done and the variance of the work done analytically and verify the transient state work fluctuation theorem quantitatively. Actually these relations have far-reaching consequences. They can be used to numerically evaluate the average work done and the variance of the work done in the case of a non-Ohmic bath when analytical evaluation is not possible.

My Fair Lady på skandinaviska : En studie i funktionell sångöversättning

The dissertation presents a functional model for analysis of song translation. The model is developed on the basis of an examination of theatrical songs and a comparison of three translations: the songs of the Broadway musical My Fair Lady (Lerner and Loewe, 1956), made for the premiere productions (1959–1960) in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. The analysis explores the three challenges of a song translator: the fitting of a text to existing music, the consideration of a prospective sung performance, and the verbal approximation of the content of the source lyric. The theoretical foundation is based on a functional approach to translation studies (Christiane Nord) and a structuralist/semiotic analysis of a theatrical message (Ivo Osolsobě, building on Roman Jakobson). Thus, three functional levels in the fitting of a text to music are explored: first, a prosodic/phonetic format; secondly, a poetic/rhetoric format; and thirdly, semantic/reflexive values (verbalizing musical expression). Similarly, three functional levels in the textual connections to a prospective performance are explored: first, a presentational goal; secondly, the theatrical potential; and thirdly, dramaturgic values (for example dramatic information and linguistic register). The functionality of Broadway musical theatre songs is analyzed, and the song score of My Fair Lady, source and target lyrics, is studied, with an in-depth analysis of seven of the songs. The three translations were all considered very well-made and are used in productions of the musical to this day. The study finds that the song translators appear to have worked from an understanding of the presentational goal, designed their target texts on the prosodic and poetic shape of the music, and pursued the theatrical functionality of the song, not by copying, but by recreating connections to relevant contexts, partly independently of the source lyrics, using the resources of the target languages. Besides metaphrases (closest possible transfer), paraphrases and additions seem normally to be expected in song translation, but song translators may also follow highly individual strategies – for example, the Norwegian translator is consistently more verbally faithful than the Danish and Swedish translators. As a conclusion, it is suggested that although linguistic and cultural difference play a significant role, a translator’s solution must nevertheless be arrived at, and assessed, in relation to the song as a multimedial piece of material. As far as a song can be considered a theatrical message – singers representing the voice, person, and situation of the song – the descriptive model presented in the study is also applicable to the translation of other types of song.