Finding Potential in a Minefield of Risk

By Kenneth Davidson

As described by Brian Howe (Weighing Up Australian Values: Balancing transitions and risks to work and family in modern Australia), nowadays, companies require greater autonomy from the worker, yet guarantee less security in return.

According to Howe, the impact of WorkChoices legislation will be to tilt the playing field even further in favour of the employer. The book, which grew out of a research project funded by the Australian Research Council, and supported by the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia and the National Institute for Economic and Industry Research, is based on the European idea of transitional labour markets (TLMs).

TLM is focused on managing the risks involved in the transition between these situations, and Gunther Schmid (one of the originators of the TLM model) argues that failure to manage the transitions between these states will lead to increased market segmentation, reduced quality of life, unstable families and probably a further reduction in the size of families.

(The Age; 16 April 2007)