This article looks at the transformational changes and innovations occurring within the Fair Work Commission (the Commission) in response to changes in the workplace relations, economic and social environments. Beginning with a discussion on defining, measuring and communicating success in the public sector and the challenges of applying public value concepts to gauge the performance of courts and tribunals, the article then considers the changing nature of the Commission’s work, a shift from collective to individual dispute resolution with a corresponding increase in the number of applications lodged. The response is the Future Directions program, over 50 new initiatives aimed at enhancing the public value of the Commission. Future Directions encompasses four broad themes: promoting fairness and improving access; efficiency and innovation; increasing accountability and productivity; and engaging with industry. The implementation of Future Directions has significantly improved the service and public value that the Commission provides to the community and enhances the Commission’s standing as one of Australia’s key national institutions.
This article introduces six national studies covering 11 countries of the EU-15, analysing the impact of government austerity measures on the working conditions of public employees and on public sector employment relations. It stresses how international financial markets and supranational actors have altered the dynamics of employment relations in a sector traditionally considered sheltered from external forces. Nevertheless, public sector employment relations remain distinctive compared to the private sector. There has been increased government unilateralism in the determination of pay and conditions, and public sector trade unions face obvious difficulties.
The article examines changes in the collective regulation of employment relations in the Australian Public Service over the last three decades. While federal Labor Governments in the 1990s briefly experimented with agency bargaining before returning to a service-wide approach to wage bargaining, the Howard Coalition Government encouraged federal public sector managers to individualize employment relations through the widespread offer of Australian Workplace Agreements and non-union collective agreements. This agenda was reinforced by policy parameters overseen by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which placed constraints on the flexibility available to managers to negotiate agency-specific employment arrangements. Despite concerted efforts to marginalize the role of the Community and Public Sector Union since 1996, the union has maintained approximately 70 percent collective bargaining coverage within the Australian Public Service. Nevertheless, the 2005 amendments to the Workplace Relations Act (1996) imposed further restrictions on unions' right of entry to public sector workplaces, made the taking of industrial action more difficult, and sent a clear signal to the Government's managerial agents to adopt a more hostile approach to public sector unions. This hostile environment has brought to the fore issues of union organization and effectiveness and the concomitant need to maintain union democracy and an active voice for members in union decision-making processes.
Based on a survey of members leaving UNISON, this study suggests that more than 40,000 members leave the union every year because of their dissatisfaction with some aspect of structure, organisation or policy. This analysis identifies some of the barriers faced by unions that are attempting to promote more participative unionism in order to reduce rates of membership turnover.
Examines the role of public relations within the UK retail sector and seeks to determine whether retailers use public relations strategically ‐ as a means of managing their relationships with key stakeholder publics ‐ or simply as a tactical publicity function. Identifies, in an exploratory study conducted in four major UK retail organizations indicative of the different types of retail institutions within the UK, the main characteristics of the public relations functions and compares these with those associated with each of the four models of public relations identified by Grunig and Hunt (1984). Looks at the relationship between the marketing and public relations functions, analysing whether public relations operates as an independent function free of control from marketing or whether it operates simply as a sub‐function of marketing. Considers to what extent public relations can be said to play a strategically important role within the UK retail sector. Highlights the considerable diversity in the way in which public relations is practised within the retail organizations studied, and suggests the need for more extensive research to identify the reasons for this diversity in the way the public relations function operates within the UK retail sector.
Decentralizing industrial relations within New South Wales is a central recom mendation of the Niland Green Paper (1989). Decentralism also represents the cornerstone of the New South Wales government's industrial relations reform agenda enshrined in the New South Wales Industrial Relations Act 1991. To date there has been little analysis of the impact o f this legislative change on industrial relations in the New South Wales public sector. This paper provides a case study that examines the degree to which responsibility for bargaining has been devolved within the Parks and Gardens of the New South Wales Ministry for the Environ ment. It argues that, in contrast to the rhetoric of the New South Wales Act, the central agency presiding over the introduction of enterprise bargaining in the public sector, the Public Employment and Industrial Relations Authority; has been reluctant to delegate responsibility to parties in the workplace.
This chapter discusses media coverage of public executions. When executions were still visible, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, publicity most often took the shape of straightforward newspaper accounts. This was how most contemporaries had access to descriptions of the death penalty. The chapter continues that it is useful to start the analysis by looking at how executions were historically depicted in the press. The press played a large part in public debate: it gave executions a specific image that was shaped by its own professional standards and style. The press also sought to compete with the legal publicity regime in the hope of being the primary source of information once official publicity was eliminated. The chapter discusses the editorial templates in execution narratives, the stereotypes of the popular scandal, the “Troppmann Moment,” the illegitimate attitude of the crowd, and the newspapers' advocacy to eliminate the publicity of executions.