Employer Attitude/Behaviour Matters: Impact of Employer Attitude/Behaviour on Indigenous Employees' Skill Acquisition and Employment Experience in the Australian Mining and Finance/Banking Sectors.

Abstract

This thesis investigates employer attitude/behaviour and its impact on Indigenous Australians’ skill acquisition and employment experience in the mining and banking industries. The current Indigenous employment literature has a limited number of studies on demand-side factors focusing on the demand for Indigenous workers and the characteristics of employers, such as how they perceive and treat Indigenous workers. This study adds to the emerging body of research with its focus on labour market discrimination and labour market segmentation as a result of employer attitude/behaviour to explain the employment disadvantage experienced by many Indigenous Australians. The study employed mixed methods to understand the phenomenon of Indigenous employment disadvantage in the context of the mining and banking organisations. The mixed-method approach included participatory observation, in-depth interviews conducted with a total of 29 management and 11 Indigenous employees across the four organisations, focus group discussions with 28 Indigenous employees, relevant document analysis, and a self-administered questionnaire that included 46 items distributed to a random sample of 278 employees. The key findings of this study confirm that systemic racism is embedded in the employment and training system of organisations, which is reflected in the barriers faced by Indigenous trainees/employees in entering and progressing through the labour market. Hence, the negative impacts lead to their low participation in the labour market. Furthermore, the study reveals the failure of executive management to take Indigenous employment seriously by embedding it as a goal throughout the organisation. This is reflected in the ‘silo approach’ to Indigenous employment, low recruitment rates, and high turnover rates that act as a ‘red flag’, indicating an attitude/behaviour of prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping that may exist in these workplaces. This finding is significant, as detailed empirical evidence shows that the mechanisms that re-produce racial inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups in the case study organisations are institutional and embedded in the employment relations and human resource systems, policies and practices of these organisations, thus explaining poor employment outcomes and, in particular, low Indigenous participation in the labour market.