Beyond Employment: The Legal Regulation of Work Relationships

Structural changes experienced in recent decades, largely as a result of increasing globalisation, have posed major challenges for labour law. Many Australians are engaged under work arrangements which marginalise or avoid obligations attaching to continuous employment. Yet for these workers the same broad interests of fair dealing, income security, collective bargaining and accessible dispute resolution may warrant protection.

Beyond Employment: The Legal Regulation of Work Relationships focuses on paid work relationships apart from continuing full and part-time employment, and examines:

The historical and demographic context of the types of work relationships found in contemporary Australian workplaces.

A typology of work relationships and use of bilateral and multilateral contract arrangements to create artificial boundaries between continuing employment and precarious employment, and the consequent gaps and discrepancies in the coverage of legal rules.

The capacity of current regulatory models to provide for income security and collective voice in workplaces and for health and safety and compensation schemes.

Current and likely future directions for labour market regulation.

Beyond Employment concludes with a framework of principles on which to build regulatory structures to protect workers' rights based on identification of the relationships and arrangements under which work is performed - regulating work, not workers.