This is what the Global Dynamics of Social Policy book series aims to achieve. The book series showcases scholarship from colleagues around the world who are interested in the global dynamics of social policy.
Contents
Governing the Work–Welfare Relationship
There was increasing need for workers, employers and social security systems to address work-family life conflicts. Also consider that in many countries a growing proportion of welfare state beneficiaries have been subjected to what is called 'conditionality', as part of the 'welfare-to-work' policy agenda (e.g.
Social Protection
The content of social protection is therefore decisive for the 'decommodification' of people, whether workers or not. Social protection within social policy includes all the 'decommodifying' aspects of welfare states.
Employment Relations
Definitions of employer-employee relations have varied, some focusing directly on the dynamics of the "employment relationship" (Keenoy 1985; Keenoy and Kelly 1996). It also borrows from Hyman's (1975) notion that employment relationships involve a constant struggle for control over the terms of the employment relationship.
Social Policy
Women were more likely than men to be in the low paid sector of the labor market (see also Cadbury and Shann 1907). The almost indisputable public legitimacy of the welfare state in the post-war period began to be challenged already in the 1960s.
The Conundrum
We believe that the main explanation [for what they see as a 'narrow focus on the welfare state'] lies in the existence of two intellectual traditions, one conventionally associated with the study of social policy and the other associated with the analysis of labor and industrial relations. Francis Castles (1985), whose long-standing contribution is discussed and criticized throughout this book, provided evidence of the benefits of integrating labor relations with the welfare state.
Objective and Argument
The analysis also discusses the implications of the comparative case study for other countries and for contemporary understanding of social protection. The period from the end of World War I to the mid-1980s, during which the welfare state emerged relatively early, strengthened its relationship with the labor relations system, and the subsequent expansion of social protection after World War II through the 1980s.
The Case Study and Its Comparative Context
Castles argued that there were four planks of the traditional Australian and New Zealand model of social protection. From a comparative perspective, Castles underestimates the differences between Australia and New Zealand over time.
The Historical-Institutionalist Approach
In the literature on institutional change, most scholars point to exogenous shocks triggering radical institutional configurations, overlooking shifts based on endogenous developments unfolding step by step. Australia and New Zealand were chosen for the case study because their policy regimes were historically similar, as recognized in the comparative literature discussed earlier, but they have taken both diverging and reconverging paths over the past few decades, undergoing both slow transitions and intermittent radical changes.
What Follows
6 this picture of divergence gave way to a renewed convergence from the mid-1990s to the present, mainly around the integration of labor relations with social policies. 7 explores the international and conceptual implications of the case study findings for other countries.
Vowles (red.), The Great Experiment: Labour Parties and Public Policy Transformation in Australia and New Zealand (pp. 48-67). Vowles (red.), The Great Experiment: Labour Parties and Public Policy Transformation in Australia and New Zealand (pp. 88–100).
A Relationship Dominated by Employment Relations
Introduction
In contrast, in New Zealand the government adopted its regime with more consideration for farmers' interests. The first section of the chapter discusses the social, economic and industrial background within which policy was formulated in both Australia and New Zealand.
The Trans-Tasman Context
New unionism was generally characterized by "the extension of unionism beyond urban tradesmen to workers in industries such as mining, railways, road transport, shipping, pastoralism and construction in the 1870s and 1880s". Employers had asserted their authority to hire non-union labor with the help of the state (de Garis 1974).
Australia
This involved judges and justices of the peace in the settlement of disputes and the establishment of some working conditions in certain industries. In Canada, the most significant example was the passage of the Mines Arbitration Act of 1888 by the Nova Scotia government.
New Zealand
The body of factory legislation that developed in New Zealand during the period was similar to its Australian counterpart. With the urbanization of New Zealand's population, successive governments became more aware of the increasing importance of the urban industries, and labor legislation was one response. The Contractors' Debt Act of 1871 represented a provisional wage protection measure, although more definitive steps in this direction were taken with the introduction of the Employment of Women Act of 1873 (Woods 1963: 19).
This combined with the growing influence of the trade union movement with the emergence of That the depressing effect of immigration on wages is not a mere theoretical abstraction[] is clearly seen in the attitude of New Zealand and Australian workers towards Chinese and other Asians. Workers' compensation, which took the same basic form as the Australian system, was ushered in around the turn of the century with the Workers' Compensation Act of 1900.
However, as with its Australian counterpart introduced eleven years later, the key feature of the New Zealand pension was its high degree of selectivity.
Comparative Analysis
It is no coincidence that Australia and New Zealand together shared international attention during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the 19th century. Except for a few brief years during the gold rush of the 1860s, farmers contributed most of New Zealand's export earnings. The various interests to which social protection responded were also reflected in the affiliations of the main architects of the labor relations system.
By explaining the relevant differences between Australia and New Zealand that emerged in the 1890s and 1900s, politics only tells part of the story. A very important factor in shaping social protection in Australia was the inclusion of the arbitration system within the federal Constitution. The importance of the different constitutional frameworks in Australia and New Zealand is revealed at different points in the history of the two regimes.
In contrast to the Australian government's relative straitjacket on industrial relations, the New Zealand government had relatively free rein.
Conclusion
Navigating Institutional Change: Settlement, Rogernomics and the Politics of Adaptation in Australia and New Zealand. Haworth (Eds.), Economic Restructuring and Industrial Relations in Australia and New Zealand: A Comparative Analysis (Australian Industrial Relations Research and Teaching Monograph No. 8, ACIRRT) (pp. Vowles (Eds.), The Great Experiment: Labor Parties and the Transformation of Public Policy in Australia and New Zealand8.
Agreement and Disagreement: The Different Fates of Corporatism under Labor Governments in Australia and New Zealand. Two Ways to Skin a Cat: Government Policy and Labor Market Reform in Australia and New Zealand. Two models of welfare: The origins and development of the welfare state in Sweden and New Zealand.
The working class and welfare: Francis G. Political development of the welfare state in Australia and New Zealand Thirty years later.
Consolidating the Relationship
One strike that year stands out, however, for its importance to the fate of arbitration. Alongside the intermittent expansion of social security, in the period between the defeat of the (first) Labor union and the election of the first Labor government, the arbitration system. This is clear from his analysis of the role of family assistance in the two countries.
That the ACTU was more closely connected to the arbitration system than the Federation of Labor was also apparent from the structure of both organizations. The emergence of the welfare state period accentuated the differences to such an extent that the gap between Australia and New Zealand widened. The Rise of New Zealand Labour: A History of the New Zealand Labor Party from 1916 to 1940.
1928, November) Industrial Arbitration in New Zealand: A Digest of the Proceedings of the National Industrial Conference, 1928.
Complicating the Relationship
There have been changes in the salary area with the gradual implementation of the principle of equal pay. The importance of the principle of equal pay for the comparison between Australia and New Zealand is further discussed in the comparative section. Through amendments to the Arbitration Act and the Police Offenses Act 1951, the New Zealand government discouraged unions from operating outside the arbitration system.
Most of the detailed comparative political scholarship on Australia and New Zealand has focused on the 1980s and 1990s. Sandlant provides a more comprehensive account of the differences between the post-war Australian and New Zealand employment relations systems. However, he places great emphasis on the relative centrality of the arbitration system in Australia.
The working class and welfare: reflections on the political development of the welfare state in Australia and New Zealand, 1890–1980.
Restructuring the Relationship
For the introduction of minimum standards under the Industrial Relations Reform Act, this was. The general direction of change in the structure of the tax system made it more regressive than it was in Australia (Easton and Gerritsen 1996). A group of authors compares Australia and New Zealand on the subject of corporatism and the importance of the role attributed to the arbitration system (Bray and Walsh 1995).
For him, the wage earners' welfare state in New Zealand effectively ended with the introduction of the Employment Contract Act (Castles 1996: 106). The employment relations section of the literature largely excludes factors related to the welfare state. These and other relevant issues are discussed below in the context of the 1980s to the mid-1990s.
For some, welfare contractualism was part of the dominance of contractualization in labor relations (Ramia 2002;
