The issue of job quality is again popular amongst researchers and policy-makers throughout the advanced economies. Better, not just more, jobs are what are now needed. Good quality jobs boost the economic and social well-being of individuals, firms, families, communities and countries. Countries with better job quality have higher rates of employment, lower rates of unemployment and higher levels of productivity and innovation. Unfortunately Australia has fallen behind the curve in terms of job quality-related policy and research and it needs to come up to speed rapidly. If Australia is to be a great country it must invest in creating quality jobs. The political will in Australia to improve job quality needs to be underpinned by improved understanding of job quality.
This book brings together Australia’s leading researchers of job quality across a range of disciplines. Disciplines covered include law and industrial relations, economics, sociology, psychology, health science, and geography. These experts outline current problems with job quality policy and research in Australia, and their perspectives on and proposals for improving that policy and research. The outcome is a book that provides the foundation and impetus necessary for Australia to develop its own research and policy agendas around job quality.
Foreword by Professor Arne L Kalleberg
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Why the Renewed Interest in Job Quality?
Chris Warhurst and Angela Knox
Challenges in Researching Job Quality
Sally Wright
Regulating for Job Quality? Wages and Working Time under Australian Labour Law
Jill Murray and Andrew Stewart
Job Quality: The Impact of Work Organisation on Health
Michael Quinlan and Philip Bohle
The Contextualised Geographies of Job Quality
Sally Weller and Iain Campbell
Job Quality and Work-Life: Unsocial Working Hours, Casual Work and Work-Life Outcomes in Australia
Barbara Pocock and Sara Charlesworth
Beyond the Necessary (Utilitarian) and Mundane? The Economics of Job Quality
Dick Bryan and Mike Rafferty
Integrating Sociological and Psychological Perspectives in Studying Job Quality
Stephen J Frenkel
Pushing Forward the Research and Policy Agenda on Job Quality
Chris Warhurst and Angela Knox
Index
The book harnesses a depth of knowledge across all disciplines and is well researched and presented within each field of expertise. … Job Quality in Australia is a foundation work, identifying the challenges and setting the scaffold for further research and discussion.
This information can enable us to support our clients, as individuals, drawing from the research as relevant to each client’s own requirements and needs. For those working with policy- makers within government, business and community organisations, this work raises important issues and provides a strongevidencebaseforcurrentresearch and is a thorough, concise handbook of the factors involved in evaluating and discussing Job Quality in Australia.
Kendal Drew, Australian Career Practitioner, Spring 2015
This book brings together Australia’s leading researchers of job quality across a range of disciplines. Disciplines covered include law and industrial relations, economics, sociology, psychology, health science and geography. These experts outline current problems with job quality policy and research in Australia, and their perspectives on and proposals for improving that policy and research. The outcome is a book that provides the foundation and impetus necessary for Australia to develop its own research and policy agendas around job quality.
InPrint, Law Institute Journal Victoria, July 2015
Job quality is, in simplistic terms, a consideration of the difference between “good jobs” and “bad jobs”. Little research has been done on job quality in Australia. There is no consensus on what factors indicate that a job is of good quality, and how these factors should be measured. This book aims to raise awareness of job quality as an issue to be placed on Australia’s research and policy agenda. Good quality jobs are said to benefit individual wellbeing, employer productivity and national economic competitiveness. Topics addressed include: how to define and measure job quality; how job quality is currently addressed in Australian labour law; the impacts of poor quality jobs on the individual; and the economics of job quality. In the final chapter the editors provide a roadmap to understand and improve job quality in Australia.
Queensland Law Reporter – 10 July 2015 – [2015] 26 QLR
The book covers safety, working hours, welfare, regulations and a whole range of familiar topics but by focusing the researchers on how these factors affect job quality the book provides a fresh perspective on a topic that unites established OHS perspectives into a socio-economic argument of which the OHS profession is in desperate need.
Kevin Jones, SafetyAtWorkBlog, June 2015
