Published in Stephen H. Frith, editor, The Value of Work. Papers from a Conference held in February 1994 in anticipation of the Australian government White Paper on Unemployment, Institute for Values Research, New College, University of NSW, Kensington, 1994, pp. 11-25.
In thinking about the value of work, it is difficult to know where to begin. The diversity of work, the varying significance it has for different individuals and communities is a basic and obvious point. Cole Porter playfully alludes to some of the meanings of work in a song he composed, ‘Her Heart Was In Her Work’:
Little Fifi making bonnets,
In a hat shop would not stop,
Till she pleased the hat-shop owner so much
That he let her call him “Pop”,
little Fifi still makes bonnets,
And she also owns the shop.
Her heart was in her work.
Arabella sang in op’ra,
Though her voice was on the rocks
Yet the man who backed the op’ra,
Gratefully gave her bonds and stocks.
She has ceased to sing in op’ra
But she has an op’ra box.
Her heart was in her work.2
Three cheers to Fifi! And to Arabella! They both seem to have solved the personal dilemma of life for work or work for life!
Where to begin? In describing the value of work, it is a hard matter to analyse especially in the dim light of some famous answers. In a well known passage Marx comments that the society of the future would enable a man to be a fisher in the morning, to read books in the afternoon, to attend to musical interests in the evening – a miscellany of enjoyable pursuits. The society of the future? Nothing much about real work or unpleasant yacka here. An idealistic story that sounds incredible. This was surely one of Marx’s strangest predictions. It is a reminder of the reasons to be sceptical about one traditional vision of heaven – everything so perfectly ordered and tranquil as to drive any curious person nuts!
The value of work is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Years ago I read something by Henry Ford railing against the inefficiency of the state by describing a scene at a post office: the long queues, the indifference of the counter staff, the beavering away at paper work by other staff uninterested in helping out at the counter to assist the customers. Customers! An inconvenience to be avoided. It was a story about bureaucratic heartlessness as well as inefficiency. In contrast there is Lenin’s view. As Peter Beilharz describes it: “His specific model of a Utopia is the post office. ‘To organise the whole national economy on the lines of the postal service …this is our immediate aim’.”3 This view might be regarded as further corroborating proof that Comrade Lenin was a touch deranged!
When you think of what kind of work gets carried out, the different types of workers and their relationships to other individuals, communities and institutions, it is tempting to hold on to the firm railings of generalisation. That must be the explanation for a lot of the very general talk that goes on in this area. A lot of generalisations, however, are superficial. The firm railings are not there. The diversity of human activity is the unfortunate obstacle to any generaliser. The economist Allan G.B. Fisher put the point this way: “Eclecticism is often repellent to those who like simple solutions, but if, as so often happens, simplicity in these matters is purchased at the cost of accuracy, we must be prepared to abandon it and test content with the complexities of eclecticism.”4 Subtle expressions of the significance of employment can be found in contemporary literature. A recent novel by David Lodge, Nice Work, describes in humorist vein the two different worlds of the manager of Pringle Engineering – a hard working, Thatcher voting manufacturer who had worked his way from the bottom to the top of his company, and the “work-in industry” exchange academic, a Cambridge educated semiotics expert, at home in a world of incomprehensible literary theories. It is a funny meeting of very different people, which turns poignant, confusing and troubling as they come to know each other.
The novel highlights the value of work to many of the characters and the emptiness of social existence outside of work. The hard-working industrialist is remote from his family; he does not know how to love or communicate. It is a familiar story coloured and lighted by hilarious moments. It is a devastating portrait. At the end of the novel a scene is sketched:
Students, drawn out of doors by the sunshine are already beginning to congregate in pairs and small groups, spreading their coats and plastic bags so that they can sit or lie on the damp grass. On one of the lawns a gardener, a young black in olive dungarees, is pushing a motor mower up and down, steering carefully around the margins of the flower beds, and between the reclining students. When they see that they will be in his way the students get up and move themselves and their belongings, settling like a flock of birds on another patch of grass. The gardener is of about the same age as the students, but no communication takes place between them, no nods, or smiles or unspoken words, not even a glance. There is no overt arrogance on the students’ part, or even resentment on the young gardener’s, just a kind of mutual instinctive avoidance of contact.5
The codes of behaviour and the different worlds that the students and the gardener inhabit are stark. On the surface there seems nothing wrong with that. The picture, however, causes one of the protagonists in the novel to think about the simplicity and naivety of her view of an egalitarian community of kindred spirits.
At the risk of falling victim to the temptation of sweeping generalisation, as earlier criticised, a dozen organising propositions strike this author as true. In the space available it may only be possible to sketch some arguments in favour of each of these propositions. In view of the background of the author, a few of the points will be illustrated by reference to some of the contemporary issues affecting the Australian labour movement.
1) Paid work is usually qualitatively different to labour applied to a particular task. It makes little sense to obliterate the distinction between paid and unpaid work.
Consider the issue of paid and unpaid work. The emphasis given in some discussions that there ought to be regard for both as remunerative employment obscures some truths. Consider this argument:
The fact is often ignored that those activities which bring about the immediate gratification and are thus direct sources of pleasure and enjoyment are essentially different from labour and working. Only a very superficial treatment of the facts concerned can fail to recognise these differences. Paddling a canoe as it is practiced on Sundays for amusement on the lakes of public parks can only from the point of view of hydromechanics be likened to the rowing of boatmen and galley slaves. When judged as a means for the attainment of ends it is as different as is the humming of an aria by the singer in the opera. The carefree Sunday paddler and the singing rambler derive immediate gratification from their activities, but not mediate gratification. What they do is therefore not labour, not the employment of their physiological functions for the attainment of ends other than the mere exercise of these functions. It is merely pleasure. It is an end in itself; it is done for its own sake and does not render any further service. As it is not labour, it is not permissible to call it immediately gratifying labour.6
The distinction between the offer of work for remunerative ends and more pleasurable pursuits is an important one. Admittedly some of what constitutes remunerative employment is socially conditioned or influenced.
2) Work means different things to different people. It is one of the strengths of modern society that this is so.
Work implies different things to different people. Work can be instrumental: a means to earning a living; it can be enjoyable and challenging; fresh training and upgrading of skills can be part of the experience. As can the possibility of losing a job, either through technical changes, economic circumstances or employer caprice. The social setting of work is important to many people – a place where friendly acquaintance, friendship or conflict might arise. In one community, paid employment might be acceptable for women, in another a more liberal and tolerant attitude prevails than the term “acceptable” implies. Workers might form social clubs or informal associations. Trade unions are organisations which strive for certain improvements and seek to socialise employees into addressing both common and individual concerns at work.
Hugh McKay in Reinventing Australia asserts that: “The best way to think of work is to regard it as ‘occupational therapy’. Of course, it is also a source of income, but the benefits of regular and satisfying work are far greater than the simple reward of the paypacket.”7 McKay’s essay contains a lucid discussion of a few home truths:
The standard joke (among both men and women) that, after a holiday with the family, ‘you go back to work for a break’ reveals a core of truth: absence from work often implies an absence from the comfort and reassurance of a familiar ritual, a familiar structure, and a welcome sense of mastery over the work that has to be done.8
There is no doubting the importance of employment – the value of work – to individuals and to society.
3) No matter how much fine talk goes on about participative democracy and freedom at work, bureaucratic and routine tasks will never be abolished.
Although the benefits of total quality management, work teams, consultative arrangements, multi-skilling and broadbanding are emphasised in much of the literature about modern work, it is not clear that all those arrangements are practicable for all work situations. (Why is it that motor vehicle assembly lines are frequently cited as “Fordism” in contrast to the Microsoft “team work” model? This contrasts two different industries in simplified ways). Some work is such that no-one’s “heart” will ever be in their work. That point, however, should not obscure the idea that fair work rules and the reasonable, humane organisation of work should influence managers, employers and unions.
4) Just as the anthromorphological argument is false, the idea that sick industries should be nurtured back to health, like sick individuals, is a nonsense.
Some industries deserve to go to the knacker. The thing to do is to ensure that the individuals employed in a precarious industry sector are assisted in obtaining training and employment elsewhere. And that what is viable within an industry should be encouraged to continue and to develop.
5) The destructiveness of economic relations which lends to structural employment upheaval and redundancy is one of the strengths of society. Such destructiveness should not be undermined.
Economics and entrepreneurial spirits proceed in ways that are usually impious and hardly gentle. Part of the dynamism of society depends on what Schumpeter called “creative destruction”, that out of existing economic activities and technical changes spring new activities in an unceasing story of decline of some businesses and rise of others. However, as described below, this point should not obliterate the responsibility of individuals, including collectively, to lend a helping hand to those whose lives are traumatised through such upheaval.
6) The community as a unified collective is a fiction. There are different groups, associations and loyalties that tug at the heart and mind of individuals; and movements which overlap and/or conflict; all this constellates society.
Hence ideas about the “interests of society” should be treated with suspicion. Similarly, generalisation about the significance of work for individuals or the community should be investigated for the motives or interests that lay behind them.
7) Not everything under the sun is sacred or should be judged in quasi-theological terms. For example, the privatisation of government business enterprises is an economic problem not a moral one.
Even so, the balance between a union leader’s responsibility to members and the broader responsibility of the position is graphically manifest in the implementation of microeconomic reform. Unions, and workers have, by and large, accepted the imperative of workplace flexibility. Workers’ jobs depend on it, especially when the impact of changes at the micro level are explained and understood.
So how have union leaders balanced the broad responsibility to the community with its responsibility to its membership and has this process facilitated an undermining of the value of work?
The debate over the merits of micro-economic reform highlights the difficulty associated with the role of the union movement. There is a tendency among business and some sections of government to make ex cathedra pronouncements with a sometimes cavalier disregard for human consequences. It is in the union movement’s approach to micro-economic reform that the genuine interest that the labour movement has in ensuring workers have the opportunity to work, and that they derive optimal value from work, is apparent.
The topic of micro-economic reform is the kind of thing that labour unions can hardly escape from. Fred Argy recently observed:
It is not good enough to argue that in the long term ‘every one benefits’ from economic reform and improved productivity, so it should be left to the market to sort out winners and losers. The risks of relying on such a ‘trickle down’ approach are borne out by the experience of the Thatcher years in the United Kingdom 1979-91, when the top 10% of households improved their standard of living by 62% but the poorest 10% suffered an absolute decline in real incomes of 14%…
This is hardly conducive to social cohesion. In any case, a vision which breaches the values and sense of fair play of many Australians will generate resistance and obstruction, would be very difficult to implement, and may not be suitable in the long term.9
That observation highlights the point that the management of change is critical to the achievement of sensible and lasting reform in almost any area. Social cohesion in the working environment is manifestly beneficial to society generally. Insofar as unions have adopted a more co-operative stance during the past 10 years, with record low levels of industrial stoppages being achieved, unions have contributed to the increased value of work.
For many, microeconomic reform equates to job shedding. For some, award restructuring and enterprise bargaining equate to the winding back of long treasured victories in past struggles.
Yet despite these commonly expressed arguments, key union leaders have argued against those views. In some respects, the complexity of the economic and social issues involved in the reform process renders leaders of the union movement exposed to criticism from the rank and file. The capacity of workers to understand complex economic issues, however, should never be underestimated, if they are consulted – their views noted and properly considered – constructive and acceptable outcomes can and are being negotiated.
Micro-economic reform is essential to the maintenance of high employment levels. Increasing skill levels and improved value-adding is the way forward, not simple cost cutting and wage reductions as some would have it.
These kinds of arguments were addressed in the 1991-92 Industry Commission Annual Report and this year’s Budget Papers. The Industry Commission warned that to pause now in the reform effort would undermine economic recovery:
These kinds of arguments were addressed in the 1991-92 Industry Commission Annual Report and this year’s Budget Papers. The Industry Commission warned that to pause now in the reform effort would undermine economic recovery:
It is true that some workers have lost their jobs because of structural change – the ongoing process of adaptation of the economy to changing economic circumstances… But structural change has also created jobs – for example, there are now more people in Australia producing goods and services for overseas markets than there were ten years ago.10
8) One reason for the recent structural changes and resulting unemployment in some sectors in the West, though primarily technical, is occasioned by the stronger comparative advantages of the newly industrialised countries. Trying to solve this “problem” is stupid. Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, any success at draining the water level causes all boats to fall.
It is interesting that the successful economic performance of newly industrialised countries in North East and South East Asia has both contributed to worldwide economic growth and to a worsening of employment prospects for some industries in the developed world. The hue and cry for assisting those industries is relevant to our point ‘4’, above. The concern within the West for poverty, unemployment, and “unfair practices” in the newly industrialised world seems to rise with the latter’s economic success. In the long run such widening economic activity and prosperity is for the good of all mankind – even if there are transitional problems along the way. Measures to block free trade are likely to prove counter productive to the overall world economy and the countries creating trade barriers. The idea of fair trade in the sense of the adherence to core international labour standards – including the right to bargain and the right to free association – is something of grave importance to millions of workers in tough economic circumstances.
9) Recognising the role of market forces in allocating the efficient use of resources makes sense.
Even so, this idea does not imply a worship of such market forces.
For example, the Australian trade union movement has its very origins rooted in questions asked by workers as to the value of work and the rights of workers in relation to market forces. In the middle of the nineteenth century the key issues of the day included freedom of association; overcoming the traditional British common law master-servant relationship; the length of the working day; exploitation of minors and the choosing of workers for employment along similar lines to that of the selection of wharf workers via the bull system, so hated by those workers.
Prior to the development of the union movement, and for a considerable part of its early history, work for many was a means to an end – subsistence income and survival. The indignity, pain, ill-health and manifest exploitation suffered by workers, on the wharves, among shearers and pastoral workers, and in the mines, were primary motivating forces in forming the new unions in the 1890s. For those workers, there were no unemployment benefits so there was little choice other than to combine and fight collectively. In many respects, this was a time of the oppressors and the oppressed.
However, in recent times, there’s been the criticism that the Australian labour movement has been co-opted by the economic rationalists. Those criticisms have often been guided by an unsophisticated view of economics and a failure to accept the realities of Australia’s economic situation.
One key to efficient allocation of resources is understanding exactly how much social programmes cost. If this information is not taken into account, how can any rational decision be made? With this information in hand, comparisons between expenditure on health, education, social security, the environment, industry support etc., can be made according to their merit and the priorities of society.
When examining employment issues, a degree of unreality seems to surround some of the social policy discussion.
While unequivocally agreeing that work is critical to the betterment of society, the opening up of the world economy renders an undeniable fact that there is no inalienable right to paid employment, as is often asserted. That is not to say, of course, that employers have any right to unfairly dismiss employees, or that we accept that redundancies are anything but the last measure of cost cutting. If, however, the Australian economy is not efficient, competitive and strategic in its investment decisions, companies will go bust and unemployment will rise. This is not in the interests of union members or society generally.
10) The idea of civilising capitalism contains a moral view that the unchecked operation of market forces can crush the freedom of individuals and that society should be governed by a humane sensitivity.
Unions have, over the past hundred years or so, played a key role in civilising capitalism. In securing decent living wages; annual leave; sick leave; occupational health and safety laws; minimum standards in hours of work and conditions of employment; maternity leave and now, parental leave. In short, unions have played a key role, often in conjunction with the political or parliamentary wing of the labour movement, in bringing some dignity to what happens at and due to work.
Yet despite these achievements, many are questioning the relevance of the union movement and this is dearly reflected in membership statistics. Whose interests does the union movement serve? Are unions advocates on behalf of all workers, or only members? Are unions responsible for the broad economic prosperity of our nation? It is in light of these questions that I believe it is appropriate to examine the role of the union movement in improving the value of work – for workers, for the economy and for society generally.
Despite the vast range of people and ideas which make up the Australian labour movement, the key objective has been and continues to be the quest for improving the value of work, for the individual worker. The key question facing us all, as officially recorded unemployment lingers above 10%, is how do we seek to develop new employment for those seeking work, and what does this imply for the existing workforce? Similar questions were asked following World War II, where an analysis of unemployment revealed that between the wars, the average rate of unemployment was 14.2% in Britain. The British government commissioned the Beveridge Report which laid the foundations to the implementation of John Maynard Keynes’s policies for the following decade. In that report, the ‘purpose’ of employment is discussed with the following conclusion: “The material end to all human activity is consumption. Employment is wanted as a means to more consumption, more leisure, as a means to a higher standard of life. For men and women to have value and a sense of value there must always be useful things waiting to be done, with money to pay for doing them.”11 In the 1990s, there appears no easy fix solution. The lessons of the Keynesian post-war boom are combined with those of 1970s stagflation. At a macro level, much has been done, particularly by the trade union movement to facilitate employment growth. Real wages have significantly declined; strike levels are at record lows and productivity improvements are vast.
11) It is economically inefficient and morally inappropriate to be complacent and indifferent to the plight of the unemployed.
The question of the importance of work to society is perennial. Consider the following quote:
Unemployment is the most hideous of social evils, and has lately seemed to be become established in a peculiarly vicious form. We have long been acquainted with transitional, seasonal and cyclical unemployment – in which catalogue the adjectives represent a crescendo of evil; but now we also have to face long-term unemployment. The worst of evil of such unemployment… is its creating in the unemployed a sense that they have fallen out of the common life. However, much their physical needs may be supplied… the gravest part of the trouble remains; they are not wanted! That is the thing that has the power to corrupt the soul of any man not already far advanced in saintliness. It has not been sufficiently appreciated that this moral isolation is the heaviest burden and the most corrosive poison associated with unemployment; not bodily hunger but social futility… Nothing will touch the real need except that to enable the man [sic.] to do something which is needed by the community. For it is the principle of personality that we should live for one another.12
These are not the words of a concerned politician, a worried sociologist or even a troubled trade union official. They are the observations of Archbishop William Temple 1942. In identifying the tragedy of lack of work, many of the values of work are established.
Ann Wansbrough enumerates a number of practical concerns associated with the lack of work – or unemployment. These include:
* The lack of adequate income support;
* Social alienation, loss of confidence and dignity;
* Homelessness arising from family conflict, particularly among youth;
* Youth suicide, pregnancy and crime;
* Debt and poverty; and
* Declining health – both emotional and physical.13
It is with these facts in mind that the Labor Council of NSW is presently seeking to improve the provisions awarded to those made redundant in the process of industry restructuring.
The Labor Council is seeking early in 1994 from the Industrial Relations Commission that employers recognise that they have a shared responsibility to make appropriate and reasonable retrenchment or severance payments in circumstances where their employees are no longer required for whatever reason, except misconduct, and are involuntarily terminated. This onus is even greater where the termination of the employee is not, as a result of the economic circumstances of the employer – but as a deliberate strategy of management decision-making. The essence of our case is based on the importance of work and income to the individual and the need for assistance in seeking alternative employment. If successful, the entitlement to retrenchment benefits will apply to workplaces with fewer than fifteen employees – who are currently excluded from such entitlements.
12) It will always be a matter of both moral and economic judgment to balance the competing interests of economic progress and security.
For example, the fear – often completely justified, particularly where employees live in regional industrial locations with low levels of training and few transferable skills – that workers will be dumped on the scrap heap in the broad national economic interest, is difficult to overcome. Difficult, also, is ensuring that this does not happen. It must be understood that this is one of the essential social functions of trade unions, to mitigate the unsocial consequences of progress.
The labour movement’s pragmatic economic rationalist credentials are joined to a vision that the role of government includes:
· Assistance with social adjustment (labour market programs);
· Educational and training opportunities (a revamped TAFE, tertiary education and vocational training systems);
· The provision of information to the market place (such as benchmarking projects);
· The creation of competitive market forces disciplining economic factors including government Trading Enterprises (hence the opportunity arising from the Hilmer Report); and
· The design of welfare policies attuned to those most in need (targeted benefits and other social wage issues).
Perhaps it is worth exploring in a little more detail some of the activities of unions in influencing how work practices might be modified. Alongside, and in many respects preceding the microeconomic reform agenda, a series of industrial reforms took place under the broad Accord framework. Now, familiar phrases including: multiskilling; rationalisation of job demarcations; flexible work practices; broadbanding; career paths; training opportunities etc., are considered part and parcel of industrial relations and in many respects are taken for granted.
Those reforms, however, have not only facilitated improved productivity and efficiency. Workers have benefited also from moving away from narrow job demarcations and have been given opportunities to train and upskill.
The Australian Vocational Certificate Training System provides a framework which has the capacity to link the vocational training system with the formal secondary and tertiary education systems – and ultimately link with industry through the establishment of a more rational award classification system.
The Carmichael Report14 examined the changing composition of Australian industry. It recognised that low skill, mass production occupations which young workers used to enter en mass, no longer exist.
The labour movement is concerned to pursue a logical approach to wage fixing based on skills and competency, with a focus on on-going skills upgrading so that we can benefit from high value added employment and justify the maintenance of our relatively high standard of living. Clearly in pursuing these goals, we pursue added value in work for those in employment, and for society generally.
If employees are treated as commodities, as they were in Dickensian London, they will rebel – oppose – obstruct. Micro-economic reform has usually been most successfully implemented where there has been detailed consultation and involvement of workers and their union representatives. Indeed, it is my view that this is true of industrial relations generally. The old style confrontationist approach to industrial relations is a relic of the past. If this is so, workers will derive increased value from the sense of control or ownership of decisions affecting their working lives.
The union movement has played a fundamental role in improving the value of work for those in employment. We must look now to ways in which we, as a society can develop skills and competitiveness so as to boost employment levels.
A re-evaluation is currently taking place in regard to the relationship between family responsibility and paid employment. The massive growth in part-time work has facilitated considerable growth in the participation rate – particularly of women.
This has come about partly through economic necessity, and party because women and men have sought such positions. While in many cases initially resisted by unions, it is now recognised that part time work fits in with the needs of those bringing up children by maintaining skills and therefore employment marketability.
The labour market, with the support of various statutory tribunals, has historically valued the work of women lower than the same work undertaken by men. Commenting on Justice Higgins Harvester Judgement, his biographer Rickard said: “By insisting that the basic wage acknowledge the worker’s right to marriage and children, Higgins explicitly incorporated the institution of the family into the theory of wage regulation.”15 In the Clothing Trades Case of 1919, Higgins established the female basic wage at 54% of the male basic wage – a ratio maintained until World War II.16
Ironically, it is the centralised wage fixing system that is often attributed with bringing about the lowest gender wages gap in the world today.17 This fact, in part reflects the important role played by unions, particularly over the past 20 years, in pursuing wage equity and recognising the true value of work undertaken.
With reference to the earlier discussion, our society recognises the importance of the work undertaken by house-keepers and child rearers through government support. However, paid work excludes these activities and attitudes in our society, generally, reflect this. Western society typically over-exaggerates the importance of paid work, and underestimates the value of household work and volunteer charity work. I agree that the union movement has historically done little to change this perception, although in this, the year of the family, unions are closely examining issues such as paid parental leave and options for paid work from home – particularly facilitated by modem computer technology.
There are many challenges. The Restoring Full Employment Green Paper has appropriately placed employment and work at the top of the political agenda. Unions have played and will continue to play an important role in constructively facilitating, through enterprise bargaining, improved efficiency and economic growth. We recognise however, that economic growth alone will not solve the problem of long-term unemployment and more innovative approaches need to be adopted. Nonetheless, we must not turn our back on the economic realities. Adding value to work, and increasing the amount of work available, hence adding value to society is and will be a product of winning international markets. Improving skills, improving education and training are crucial to establishing market niches where Australia can and is competing.
The examination of micro-economic reform in this paper, in light of the various Accord driven labour market initiatives, shows that unions have come to terms with the twin imperatives of efficient and competitive production and increased value for workers in work.
Socrates once asked the question about whether it makes sense to repair our shoes by a good cobbler or by a good man. Of course the answer is obvious. But the question raises some disturbing thoughts about the value of work and about the community – including the cultivation of good individuals. Hopefully the discussion in this paper highlights why the controversy about the significance of work and the signs it reveals about society will be as durable as Socrates’ tricky question.
Note on Publication
Michael Easson is Secretary of the Labor Council of New South Wales, and a Vice-President of the ACTU.
Footnotes (as included on publication)
1) I am grateful for the input from Tom Forrest and Mark Duffy concerning a draft of this paper; the discussion on the day that I delivered it also prompted me to revise the original in considerable detail; the usual caveats apply.
2) Kimball, Robert (editor), The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983) p. 307.
3) Beiiharz, Peter, Labour’s Utopias (London: Routiedge, 1992) p. 22; the quote from Lenin comes from The State and Revolution.
4) Fisher, A.G.B., Economic Progress and Social Security (London: Macmillan and Co., 1945).
5) Lodge, David, Nice Work (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 384.
6) von Mises, Ludwig, Human Action A Treatise on Economics, Third Revised Edition, (Chicago: Contemporary Books), pp. 137-138,
7) Mackay, H., Reinventing Australia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1993) p. 85.
8) Ibid., p. 86.
9) Argy, F., ‘The Road Back to Full Employment’, Victor Argy Memorial Lecture, (Sydney: Mimeo, November 1993) pp. 22-23.
10) Annual Report 1991-92 Industry Commission (Canberra: AGPS, 1992) p. 1. See also Easson, Michael (1994) ‘Future Directions: The Petshop Galah and The Wise Owl: Microeconomic Reform and Australian Labour’, Business Council Bulletin, No. 105, January/February, pp. 32-37.
11) Beveridge, W., Full Employment in a Free Society, (UK: Bradford and Dickens, 1944) – see p. 20 and p. 46.
12) Ibid.
13) Wansbrough, A., A Research Report with Proposals for Policy, Principles and Action by Parishes and Synod, Uniting Church of Australia, Board of Social Responsibility, 1992, pp. 22-27. (See also her paper in the booklet in which my article appeared.)
14) Employment Skills Formation Council, The Australian Vocational Certificate Training System, March 1992.
15) J. Rickard, H.B. Higgins (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987) p. 172.
16) See R. Kramar and D. Plowman, ‘Legal Incentives and Womens’ Wages in Australia’ – paper presented at the Womens’ Wages: Stability and Change Conference, Chicago, March 1990.
17) See M. Burgmann, ‘Enterprise Bargaining and Women’s Wages’ (Sydney, mimeo, 1990) p. 1.
