Artificial intelligence (AI) has a growing presence in Australian workplaces. While early assessments focused on job automation and productivity gains, a growing body of evidence points to AI affecting workplace relationships, worker autonomy and psychosocial well-being. This paper examines the relational risks of AI in Australian workplaces, drawing on national and international literature. Businesses in Australia adopt AI technologies for data entry automation, document processing, fraud detection and Generative AI tools. Promising operational efficiency, these innovations also introduce risks of algorithmic management, the erosion of tacit knowledge, digital incivility and the devaluation of human labour. Current governance frameworks fail to sufficiently address these relational harms. This paper makes three contributions. First, it identified AI relational risks affecting workplace dynamics and worker agency. Second, it identifies gaps in Australia's policy response, particularly in the integration of AI-related risks into Work Health and Safety (WHS) regulations. Third, it proposes a framework for managing relational risks grounded in job crafting, participatory oversight and expanded WHS definitions. In doing so, it positions the worker not as a passive recipient of AI impacts but as a co-designer of workplace transformation.

This article explores how, in reshaping creative labour in Australia's cultural and creative industries, artificial intelligence is exposing the limitations of the current industrial relations framework. Using a policy ecology lens and drawing on submissions from creative industries stakeholder groups to two parliamentary inquiries, the article maps the fragmented governance of creative labour across industrial relations, copyright law, cultural policy. As artificial intelligence is disrupting attribution, income, and authorship in the cultural and creative industries, many freelance and contract-based workers fall outside the core workplace protections afforded to employees. The article argues that a reimagining of industrial relations is required to ensure that creative labour is adequately protected in an economy increasingly driven by artificial intelligence.

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithmic management (ARM) systems is transforming the workplace, raising significant debates about net employment, work organisation and working conditions. This article critically reviews key European policy aimed at regulating AI and ARM at work, as well as identifies gaps in the current policy framework. The European Union (EU) has adopted a distinct human-centric approach to AI, prioritising ethical and trustworthy design and use, rooted in its fundamental values. Though generally welcomed, the risk-based approach of the EU AI Act is insufficient, on its own, to protect workers from the potential harms of AI. Hence, specific additional employment legislation, either at the EU- or national levels, combined with collective bargaining at the sectoral and company levels, is needed to address the regulatory gap. Upskilling of social partners, including trade union officials, work council members and employers, is required so they obtain insights into the ‘black box’ of algorithms, and so they can have meaningful input into the design and deployment of AI systems.

Africa-born migrants in Australia, particularly those who are racialised Black, face significant challenges in securing employment that aligns with their qualifications and experience, leading to higher rates of unemployment and underemployment compared to other population groups. This study explores the employment-seeking experiences of Black Africa-born migrants in South Australia, focusing on how coloniality – understood as the enduring power dynamics established during colonialism – shapes recruitment and selection processes. Drawing on focus group data from 32 participants, we examine how coloniality manifests through the devaluation of qualifications, racialized assumptions, and systemic barriers in the labour market. We argue that these processes reinforce a coloniality of employment selection, where Black Africa-born migrants are marginalised and relegated to lower-status roles. This research bridges macro-theorizing on coloniality with the micro-level experiences of job seekers, highlighting the need for coloniality-cognizant approaches to address these inequities in employment practices. The study contributes to a growing body of work that seeks to expose and challenge the ongoing reproduction of colonial power structures in contemporary labour markets.

Telework emerged in the 1980s as a new form of organising work, and the share of employees working from home has slowly grown since. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns, the prevalence of telework has significantly increased across all EU countries. However, beneath the surface of common trends, there is significant variation between European countries in terms of policy responses and the prevalence of telework. This paper aims to increase understanding of cross-country diversity on telework across Europe through an exploratory analysis, which aims to categorise and group countries that share relevant patterns in terms of their telework regimes. Drawing on institutionalist comparative employment relations literature, we define a telework regime as a constellation of environmental aspects, workplace practices and rules that affect each other and frame employers’ and employees’ choices regarding flexible work arrangements. To identify key components of such regimes, we review the literature on those three analytical dimensions that could be useful to classify and group countries across Europe. The operationalisation of theoretical constructs relies on novel indicators for measuring telework rules. Then we carry out principal component analysis to identify empirically relevant factors and perform cluster analysis to identify groups of countries that rely on specific telework regimes. Our empirical results largely align with previous industrial relations and working time regime typologies but also show new country divisions, which reveal the existence of specific telework regimens beyond general industrial relations systems.

The gender pay gap (GPG) has come to symbolise persistent inequalities women face at work. In response, governments are increasingly adopting regulation that requires employers to disclose gendered differences in pay, although often without compelling employers to address these pay gaps. An important question therefore arises over the role and capacity of non-state actors operating as regulatory intermediaries to hold employers accountable for closing GPGs. We use Australia as a case study, where a recent government-led review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 provides insight into intermediaries’ perspectives on GPG disclosure regulation. Drawing on 121 submissions to this legislative review as well as 14 in-depth qualitative interviews, we provide novel insights to identify the cast of regulatory intermediaries, their means of influence and, importantly, the legislative features that enable them to influence employer action to close the GPG.

This qualitative study examines the experiences of platform workers in Nigeria's gig economy, with a specific focus on their voice and representation mechanisms and implications for decent work. Drawing on the institutional theory and 37 semi-structured interviews with location-based and cloudwork platform workers, the study advances knowledge of how the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars shape what constitutes voice, representation and decent work experiences in the Nigerian platform economy. Findings underscore the influence of platform design and its impact on the perception of decent work and workers’ voice. It highlights the formal and informal voice channels and alternative worker associations for voicing among Nigerian platform workers. Furthermore, it demonstrates how cultural values in Nigeria influence what constitutes decent work for platform workers and its implications for voice. Beyond the theoretical implications, the study highlights practical and social implications, emphasising that policy reforms are needed to address employment classification, strengthen worker protections and enhance social dialogue mechanisms. It advocates interventions to improve working conditions, empower gig workers and foster a more equitable and sustainable gig economy.

Based on ethnographic research and interviews conducted over 2 years (2021–2023), mainly with Bangladeshi workers, community leaders, local NGO staff and trade union representatives in two Italian shipyards in Fincantieri, this paper focuses on the interrelations of labour process, social reproduction and migration regime. Our study analyses how the articulations of these three spheres in a specific locality shape social relations within and outside the workplace. First, we focus on the analysis of the labour process organised through subcontracting firms and informal intermediaries that select workers and control them inside the workplace. Second, we show how the social reproduction of the Bangladeshi workers in the private sphere is influenced and controlled by their ‘ethnic community’. Third, we highlight the impact of Italian migration and labour policy on workers' behaviour. The intertwined nature of the mechanisms of these processes reflects the fact that workplaces are not a detached part of society. Rather, they are embedded in general political rules and involve the time and space of social reproduction where the labour force reproduces itself.

Devolved governance, school autonomy and marketisation impact the employment practices of schools and the working conditions of teachers. However, the employment-related effects on school services staff are under-researched. This study draws on data from interviews with staff at one public high school to analyse school services staff experience of school autonomy and the employment practices of principals in the context of competitive education markets. This case study illustrates how a principal's management of employment and labour relations in a school experiencing declining enrolments and reduced resources impacted the labour and working conditions of school services staff. We argue that the principal applies a calculation of utility-maximisation and entrepreneurship to the non-teaching staff's employment and carelessness to their employment conditions, thereby producing flexploitation that relies on the unpaid time and emotional commitment of their staff to do the best for the students. We recommend systemwide policies and practices that effectively train and support principals to protect the employment rights of all school staff should accompany decentralisation policies where responsibility for staffing is devolved to principals.