The Quality of Work Life of Australian Employees – the development of an index

Thirty years ago an international conference was held in Los Angeles on the Quality of Working Life, papers from that conference subsequently appeared in a book, with the same title, edited by Louis Davis and Albert Cherns. At the time the interest in developing a meaningful measure of the quality of work life was, in part, a reaction to the extent and rapidity of change, especially technological change, that workers were facing. There was also a strong view that the experience of work can also “encourage positive… attitudes of citizenship and build a more just and humane society”. The pace and scale of change in organisations over recent years has brought about a renewed interest in the issue of the quality of people’s work lives. (Kirby & Harter 2001, Bohl et al. 1996). Invariably, different interest groups concentrate on a range of indicators in assessing the quality of peoples work lives. While job insecurity and declining working conditions are of paramount importance to employee groups, perceived employee dissatisfaction and the concomitant effects on productivity and on-costs are of concern to employer groups. Needless to say the measures to include in a quality of worklife index are not without controversy. In addition, there remain significant methodological challenges to overcome in constructing robust measures that can effectively operationalise the indicators

Union Administrative Practices: A Comparative Analysis

In response to growing challenges, many labor organizations are reevaluating themselves in an effort to become more efficient and effective. Their efforts, however, are limited by their frames of reference. Seldom do unions compare practices across labor movements. To expand these frames of reference we compare union administrative practices in three countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two specific areas of union administration are examined — human resource/personnel practices and strategic planning. Results from these countries are presented and analyzed to identify and explain similarities and differences

Worklife in the new millennium

In little more than a decade the experience of paid work has profoundly changed for many Australians. The scale and rapidity of change has affected what people do at work, when they work, how they are managed, and the conditions in which they work. In Australia, as in many other English-speaking countries, the 1990s saw massive restructuring and changes at workplaces as a result of increased competition, new technology, and an economic climate that gave management, assisted by a 'reformed' regulatory environment, the confidence and incentive to make these changes. During the 1990s, the standard working time and wage earner model, traditionally associated with the notion of an employee working 'normal hours' over a five-day week for eleven months of the year, was being dismantled as employers, aided by governments, pursued what was widely known as 'workplace flexibility'. In this chapter we examine the nature of these changes and the impact they have had on people's lives. Other chapters in this book examine the drivers for these changes in greater detail