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The Australian government has begun effecting significant changes that focus on the provision of high-quality, accessible early-childhood education and care (ECEC). This approach is twofold: it recognises the continual increase of maternal employment and its value to the productivity of Australia, and the importance of the early years of life. This article examines the significant changes made to ECEC policy and highlights some key areas of concern for parents, and mothers in particular, as they make plans for entering (or re-entering) the workforce. These areas of concern are likely to have an impact upon children, families and the productivity agenda.

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This paper explores the gendered impact of structural change in regional labour markets, and the implications for gender equality. While buffering, segmentation and substitution labour market hypotheses have been used in national and supra-national analyses of labour market inequality, their application has not been tested at the regional level. Examining three regions within Australia (the Latrobe and Geelong regions of Victoria and North Western region of Tasmania) that have experienced distinctive patterns of economic restructuring since 1996 the paper finds that while women's education and training has improved, the concentration of women in part-time work and female-dominated industries has resulted in limited change to their relative contribution to household income. The research suggests that the application of labour market hypotheses to regional labour markets provides an improved understanding of the impact of economic restructuring on gender equality.

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Studies exploring the linkages between training and turnover have produced inconsistent results. That inconsistency suggests a path for further study into the variables that might be confounding this relationship. The main purpose of this research was to test the mediating effect of organisational commitment in the relationship between training and turnover intentions. A sample of 124 participants took part in this study. Training was initially found to have a significant inverse relationship with turnover intentions. However, when organisational commitment was entered into the model as a mediating variable, the effect of training on employee turnover intentions became insignificant, suggesting full mediation. The impact of training on turnover intentions is not straightforward, but works first through the effect of training on attitudes, that is on commitment. The results demonstrate the importance of increasing the commitment of employees to the organisation through training, which can help companies to reduce turnover intentions.

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This invited article is a revised version of a paper presented to a Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business seminar on Junior Wages and Youth Employment, Melbourne in March 1999. The author asserts that developing a non-discriminatory alternative to age-based pay is extremely difficult and that none of the proponents of competency-based pay have been able to come up with a viable alternative to the current system. He maintains that the abolition of age-based provisions in awards is thus likely to have the immediate effect of increasing pay rates for many teenagers, with the substantial risk of pricing them out of jobs. He looks at the 'so-called alternatives' and provides an appendix of submissions to the Junior Rates Inquiry Supporting Non-Discriminatory Alternatives. Show less

While the benefits of training are acknowledged by employers and employer associations, employees and unions, and governments, little is known about the nature and extent of the training arrangements implemented within the framework of enterprise bargaining. Thus this article addresses these issues: extent of training provisions in enterprise bargaining agreements and changes in those provisions since the inception of enterprise bargaining in Australia; demographic profile of persons covered by agreements with training provisions; quality of training provisions included in agreements and whether these differ across industries. Show less

The labour market for nurses appears to be persistently in a state of shortage, as evidenced by regular reports of 'the nursing crisis'. This paper draws on data from two surveys to investigate critical aspects of the working lives of Australian nurses: a survey of Registered Nurses in Western Australia and the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia [HILDA] survey. While nurses face strong employment opportunity, consistent with an occupational shortage, there is evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with aspects of their jobs. Despite strong dissatisfaction with pay, estimated wage equations suggest that, by and large, nurses' pay is in line with that of other women when typical human capital variables are controlled for. Dissatisfaction with non-pay aspects of the job appears to have a stronger influence on overall job satisfaction and on intentions to leave the profession. The age profile and future intentions of the current nurse workforce suggests a continuing, if not worsening, shortage of qualified nurses in Australia.

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Researchers in both North America and Europe have documented evidence of a pronounced shift in the composition of labour demand favouring more skilled workers. Similar claims have been made with respect to employment in the Australian labour market, but these claims have been challenged on the grounds that there is no general trend towards upskilling. Evidence presented by Cully (1999) led him to conclude that changes in the composition of employment have favoured both the most skilled and the least skilled - that the demand for labour has become increasingly polarised. In this paper, it is argued that neither of these explanations is correct. Instead, it is claimed that focusing on the numbers of persons employed is misleading and that when data are adjusted for hours worked, the Australian employment experience is entirely consistent with the international evidence. Furthermore, comparisons over time are likely to be sensitive to the period chosen for such comparisons. The analysis reported here uses start and end points that appear to be at similar stages in the business cycle (1989 and 2000) and hence the differential rates of employment growth across occupations are less likely to be the result of cyclical influences.

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This article analyses the impact of a change in Australia’s immigration policy, introduced on 1 July 1999, on migrants’ probability of being over or undereducated or correctly matched. The policy change consists of stricter entry requirements about age, language ability, education, and work experience. The results indicate that those who entered under more stringent conditions - the second cohort - have a lower probability of to be overeducated and a correspondingly higher probability of being better matched than those in the first cohort. The policy change appears to have reduced the incidence of overeducation among women, enhanced the relevance of being educated in Australia to being correctly matched, and has attracted a higher proportion of immigrants who were already underutilised (or overachieving) in their home countries. Overall, the policy appears to have brought immigrants that reduced the education mismatch in Australia’s labour market.

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On 3 June 2010, the Minimum Wage Panel of Fair Work Australia concluded its Annual Wage Review for 2009-10. Having considered the evidence from written public submissions, public consultations and a range of internal and external research, the Panel decided to increase minimum wage rates in modern awards by 26 dollars per week with effect from 1 July 2010. The increase brings the National Minimum Wage for adult employees to 569.90 dollars per week, or 15 dollars per hour for a standard 38-hour week, with proportionate increases for employees paid less than the adult rates. The decision is important for several reasons relating to: the context in which it was made; the impact it will have on living standards and business costs; and for what it signals about the future of minimum wage adjustment under the Fair Work Act 2009. I review the decision with respect to each of these themes in the following sections.

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This article explores the effect of apprenticeship training on productivity in the Australian construction industry. Using state-level data, the correlation between the level of training and productivity is analysed. The results are then used to build on anecdotal evidence to suggest a firm, pre-existing, positive relationship between training and productivity. In addition, the level of apprenticeship training in Australia is related to the composition and general characteristics of the Australian construction industry.

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