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Centre for Work + Life research activities

 

As nationally and internationally recognised leaders in research, CWL members have wide and varied research interests. A selection of projects are summarised below.

Balancing booksWorkChoices: impacts and policy responses

The Centre for Work + Life has been researching the consequences of WorkChoices and policy alternatives since WorkChoices' inception in March 2006. The centre’s focus has been qualitative research with low income workers, particularly in South Australia and nationally. The centre’s recommendations address workplace climate, job security, working time, pay and pay equity, information for employers and employees, enforcement, choice and voice and further research and monitoring. The centre’s distinctive research emphasis is on the effects of labour market trends beyond the workplace for individual, household and community/social well-being. WorkChoices project and publications page

Work, life and health project

The Work, life and health project examines work–life issues in the Australian workforce as a whole, and also in the health workforce. National data collection is conducted with the Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI). A quantitative and qualitative study of the health workforce is being conducted in Western Australia and South Australia. Work, life and health project page

The Work, life and health project is an ARC-funded study in partnership with SafeWork SA and the Western Australian State Health Advisory Committee on Work Life Balance.

Low paid workers and VET: increasing VET participation amongst lower paid workers over the life cycle

The Centre for Work + Life is conducting a major new research project focused on how changing conditions at work, home and in the wider community affect the participation of lower educated and lower paid groups in Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector. Low paid workers and VET project page

AWALI

The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) is an annual national survey of work–life outcomes amongst working Australians, which serves as a benchmarking tool to compare and contrast work–life outcomes across various groups defined by geographic location, employment characteristics and social demographics. Australian Work and Life Index project page

Changing work–life patterns of Australian women, men and children, households and communities

This project creates a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship for Professor Barbara Pocock 2003–2007 to explore the effects of work on households, along with individual preferences and household and community structures.

Low paid services employment in Australia

This project is investigating the effects of low pay on workers in the childcare, cleaning and hotel accommodation industries. The project also examines the dimensions – including the incidences – of low pay, the causes of low pay and policy responses to it.

The research involves over 100 interviews and a number of focus groups with workers, household members and community stakeholders from South Australia, Victoria and Sydney. In addition, Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey data are being examined.

Re-conceptualising citizenship and the commodification of labour

This project is investigating the experiences of young workers in the South Australian labour market and analysing the strength and nature of the young worker’s voice in the workplace at a time when new industrial regulations are taking effect in Australia.

Specifically, the study will address five questions:

  1. Does the growth in casual employment amongst young workers represent a shift towards the re-commodification of their labour (that is, the treatment of their labour as a factor of production rather than human effort to which rights, workplace citizenship and agency are attached)?
  2. What does growing casualisation amongst young people mean for their workplace citizenship and their health, identity, income, autonomy, skill development and entry into the full-time secure adult workforce? Do young people exercise effective workplace citizenship?
  3. What factors assist effective workplace citizenship amongst young workers, and what factors impede it? What role do unions play in the construction and effective exercise of this citizenship?
  4. What forms of assistance, information and advocacy best assist in improving the situation of young workers?
  5. Under what circumstances can casual work facilitate the transition into ongoing secure and skilled employment and citizenship more broadly?

Businessman walking barefoot in the parkThe work, home and community study

This project is examining how new housing developments are succeeding in meeting residents’ work, housing, services and community needs. The study compares high and low socioeconomic urban sites and studies men, women and children.

The project examines how South Australians, and Australians more broadly, are ‘putting together’ their changing work, housing, services and communities, how workers and residents see the relationship between these elements, and what kinds of spatial alignments they need and are best facilitated by all tiers of government, employers, urban developers, community services and organisations.

The project investigates six pivotal questions:

  1. What do workers and those they live with seek from their work, homes and communities?
  2. What kinds of relationships do they seek between their workplaces, homes and communities?
  3. How do workers and families build their communities and sustain and strengthen their social fabric?
  4. Are these relationships and communities sustainable?
  5. What can be learned from experiences elsewhere?
  6. What are the policy implications of the analysis for different levels and elements of government, as well as for employers, unions and community organisations?
     

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