Clothing Outwork: Union Strategy, Labour Regulation and Labour Market Restructuring

Abstract

On 12 March 1998 the Australian Industrial Relations Commission found that tbe clauses of the Clothing Trades Award dealing with the regulation of outwork in the clothing industry were allowable in their entirety under section 89A2(t) of the Workplace Relations Act 1996. This decision preserves the mechanisms that will enable the award to be enforced according to the industry's Homeworker Code of Practice. This paper describes the union's community action campaign against unregu lated clothing outwork, a campaign that bas successfully focused public attention on the need to establish safeguards for outworker employment at a time when employee protection more generally is under threat. It attributes tbe progress in regulating outwork to the union's public awareness campaign and its uneven impact on the competitive position of employers, to a resultant change in employer attitudes and strategies, and to the government's desire to quieten opposition to its industrial relations agenda.