Australian universities have undergone considerable restructuring within the last few decades such as downsizing, unit amalgamations and adopting new digital work practices. This article draws together industrial relations and organisational psychology literature, exploring restructuring and effects within universities. It presents national data on university restructuring, levels of organisational psychosocial safety climate (PSC), and burnout from 2020 to 2022, from the workers’ perspective. Survey responses were collected across 39 Australian universities at 3 time points: 2020 (n = 2191), 2021 (n = 1731) and 2022 (n = 1373). A large proportion reported ‘high’ levels of restructuring at each data collection phase (2020 = 41%, 2021 = 56% and 2022 = 49%). A multi-level model showed that PSC is an organisational climate predictor of restructuring, and in turn, worker burnout. Hierarchical linear modelling of the longitudinal data revealed significant pathways and a good model fit. Findings suggest that organisations with poor climates for psychological health (i.e. low PSC) are more likely to restructure, which is then associated with higher levels of burnout. Primary-level PSC-focused interventions are needed to prioritise the psychological health of the workforce over persistent productivity concerns, which is the conventional driver of restructuring.

This article focuses on a significant psychosocial hazard – sexual harassment. It advances the existing body of theory on the antecedents of sexual harassment by drawing on the pressure, disorganisation and regulatory failure (PDR) framework. In doing so, it develops hypotheses about how the PDR variables contribute to sexual harassment and proposes a research agenda to empirically test them. An improved understanding of the influence of PDR on sexual harassment will also enable an examination of the effectiveness of recent regulatory changes designed to address this destructive and costly problem in Australia, and highlight areas requiring additional intervention.

Institutional transformations in recent decades have limited the weight and power of collective actors. Notwithstanding this, literature on employer associations (EAs) has argued a resilient performance in terms of affiliation. In this paper, we use comparative institutional analysis to evaluate the actual scope of these associations in terms of membership and the share of workforce employed by their members. Moreover, by utilising a logistic regression approach we delve into the drivers of the choice to join these organisations. Our results show a general decline of EAs, and point to large manufacturing companies as the great reservoirs of affiliation. However, institutional variations across Europe cause significant differences between countries. We thus demonstrate how membership is strongly influenced by the institutional framework, the relevance of the variables related to the provision of collective goods as a counterbalance to trade union activity and adherence to collective bargaining schemes.

The response to COVID-19 generated an unprecedented global demand for medical equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE). This article explores how states have exercised their leverage and used regulatory tools to address human and labour rights violations, mainly forced labour, when procuring PPE. In particular, it analyses three tools used before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: trade import restrictions, transparency in supply chain regulation and public procurement processes. These tools are explored in relation to three states: the US, the UK and Sweden. This article argues that no single system currently provides a comprehensive and adequate response to human rights abuses in public supply chains, but that a combination of all of them in some form could provide the basis for a more effective and resilient approach – not only during a crisis, but also in the longer term, and may prove more capable to address systemic abuse.

Since regaining its independence in 1991, Lithuania has undergone a process of chaotic privatization in which labor was systematically disempowered, above all, by the targeted erosion of labor rights formally endorsed in the pre-existing Soviet labor code. In the newly legitimized and aggressive pro-business environment of the post-Soviet era, organized labor's residual power was seen as an anachronistic impediment to the power of capital in reshaping society and the economy. This article investigates the political dynamics of disembedded labor law reform in Lithuania, which enabled neoliberal reformers to legislate while disregarding broader societal interests and imposing unilateral changes in labor relations. A content analysis of 852 news media reports on labor law reforms published in 2014–2016 was used to demonstrate how discursive and institutional exclusion and sequencing were employed by the neoliberal government to circumvent the interests of major social and economic groups, resulting in the passage of pro-business legislation. The implications of resorting to disembedded politics in the labor reform process are discussed.

An increasing number of Western scholars are currently arguing that socialist transition theory may provide solutions to industrial relations and management problems that capitalism struggles to resolve. I add to this effort by introducing the debate on whether scientific management could assist the transition from capitalism to socialism that was undertaken in the United States through the first two decades of the 20th century. By so doing, I make two contributions. First, I show that socialist theory has a substantial lineage within management studies from which current progressives might draw lessons. Second, I add to the literature that has problematised the authoritarian depiction of Taylorism that is orthodoxy in the management and industrial relations literature. I do so by showing that a significant body of theorists and practitioners believed scientific management could assist populations to move beyond capitalism. Some welcomed this possibility, while others viewed it as a dire threat, requiring that Taylorism be demonised.

This article examines the activities of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and Deliverance Milano (DM), the main collective actors that are currently organising food delivery platform workers in London and Milan, respectively. Both IWGB and DM seek to encourage and support alliances across organisational boundaries as well as across national borders, albeit in different ways. Drawing on a combination of participant observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis, the findings of these case studies suggest that IWGB and DM are successfully developing trans-organisational and transnational alliances and ties. The article contributes to the growing literature on the renewal of workers’ representation, focusing on the relationship between trade unions and other collective actors at local as well as national and international levels. In particular, we propose a distinction between purpose-oriented and value-oriented alliances, both present in the networks of collective actors engaged in organising platform workers.

This qualitative study explores the conceptualisation of justice in the context of platform work, focusing on the dimensions of distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with platform-based food delivery couriers in Taiwan, the study extends the organisational justice theory to platform work, showing how the dimensions of justice remain highly relevant in platform work, despite its individualised work organisation and algorithm-mediated transactions. The study highlights the influence of legal categorisations on distributive justice perceptions, while uncovering how perceptions of procedural justice had been undermined in relation to task allocation, fee calculations, and the lack of voice and consultation. Furthermore, it underscores the significance of dignity, respect, transparency, and explainability in interpersonal and informational justice within the platform work context. The theoretical and empirical contributions provide insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to better understand and address justice concerns within the rapidly expanding platform work sector.